And Then There Were Nine
by Tsona
Summary: Rewritten through CHAPTER 9! Now missing a chapter's content between ch. 9 and 10, but the ending's up. Draco's living at the Burrow in the summer of sixth year. Secrets will be revealed, trusts will be broken, and friendships will be formed.
1. Here the Hammer Will Strike

_A/N: This is the third in a series of stories I have been writing about Draco's trials since the rise of the Dark Lord, the sequel to _Tapestries Tear_, the sequel to _Death Eaters Don't Cry_. I began this series in the long hiatus between the release of _GoF_ and _OotP_, but have been updating it since the release of _DH_ to more closely fit JKR's plot. The first two stories have now been rewritten entirely. I will be posting in the summary of this story how far I have gotten in updating it. A few things you should know before I set you loose to read: Because my plot came into being before I knew where JKR's was headed, there are some things I have been unable to reconcile. Bill is still in Egypt, Fleur is still and France, Umbridge never taught or came to Hogwarts, and because of my personal preference, I have set Malfoy Manor on a point in Northumbria. This story is set in the summer between _OotP_ and _HBP_. Draco, unable to fulfill the Dark Lord's demands, fled his new headquarters at Durmstrang and returned to Hogwarts in March of 5th year, where he had to battle the Dark Lord's lingering hold on his mind, his cronies, and the distrust of students and staff at Hogwarts. Everything else of importance I think you might discover quickly in the story itself. I hope you enjoy! Let me know if there are points of confusion because I know this plot so well now, it's sometimes hard for me to tell._

_Yours forever, Tsona_

_Dedication: I feel I must put in a new dedication for this updated version of _And Then There Were None_. TragicSlytherin came not too long ago upon my stories and has been encouraging me with her kind reviews since—not anything too detailed, not usually, but I have appreciated each one as fanfiction readers become less and less frequently, it seems, reviewers. Nothing cheers an author up so much as a review. I even appreciate the flames. So, I put in a plug for myself and for TragicSlytherin. She reviewed my works and, through her reviews, I found her own. I have read them all and they are brilliant! You can now find TragicSlytherin on my favorite authors list. Cheers!_

_When the stars threw down their spears,_

_And water'd heaven with their tears,_

_Did he smile his work to see?_

_Did he who made the Lamb make thee?_

—_William Blake, "The Tyger"_

"Draco?"

Draco had counted the days. Eleven days. It had been eleven days since he had gotten off the train in King's Cross, since he had climbed into a taxi and had spent three and a half hours in a backseat with Ginny pressed on one side, Mrs. Weasley on the other, and the other Weasleys surrounding him in the front and backseats. It had been a supremely uncomfortable trip, with Mrs. Weasley forcing conversation, everyone saying as little as possible. They had talked about classes. They had talked about Ron's O.W.L.s. Mrs. Weasley had pushed Draco till he had admitted that he too had taken the tests and that he, like Ron, couldn't say that he had enjoyed them. They had talked about the twins' N.E.W.T.s. They had talked about none of these things in detail.

After eleven days, the Weasleys had still spoken very little in front of Draco. And he knew why. The Weasleys didn't like him, and the Weasleys didn't trust him. And why should they? Draco himself didn't know how much the Dark Lord could access of his mind. The possibility hadn't seemed to worry Dumbledore, and Dumbledore was a genius, so Draco supposed this ought to have been enough for him, but...

Draco had spent his eleven days miserably. It had taken very few days after his arrival at the Burrow for the mist to creep in, a heavy fog that hung over everything, that made escaping outside of the Burrow walls, even for him, not entirely pleasant. Still, even the fog-ridden garden was more pleasant than the overcrowded house, which seemed all the more crowded as he was met at every corner with contempt.

"Draco!"

Draco pulled his cloak closer about himself. The fog had brought an unseasonable chill with it. It made him lethargic. He felt heavy with it wrapping around his ankles, closing him in its arms. Sometimes it felt as constricting, as deadly as he imagined a Lethifold's grasp to be. He didn't feel like walking far from the Burrow in the fog, as much as he wanted to escape—never mind that he wasn't allowed to go far away. He had given the Weasleys his word that he would stay in sight of the house, in shouting distance at least. He had once tried to wander farther, across the orchards. When Mrs. Weasley had found him, she had been furious, and Draco had stood silently before her, his blood boiling, as she had shouted herself hoarse and had finally extracted the promise that he would remain in sight of the house. And where would he go anyway?

The Dark Lord, the Death Eaters were still hunting him.

"Draco, come inside. Have some breakfast."

Mrs. Weasley was behind him, trying her best to sound kindly, to sound welcoming, but dislike and distrust tainted her tone.

"You don't want me," Draco pointed out. "Why do you bother?"

"We do want you," Mrs. Weasley lied, but even she must have felt it feeble because she added, "And we promised Dumbledore we'd—"

"Keep an eye on me," Draco finished for her, turning to meet her gaze then. She always said this whenever he asked. She didn't even vary her syntax. The phrase was as grey as the fog.

But his bored tone lit the fires in her eyes. Her full cheeks flushed red.

"I'm coming," he hurried before she could start again on the same argument, before she could tell him off, remind him of the position that he was in. She was only slightly less tetchy than the average Blast-Ended Skrewt. He led the way through the overgrown garden back to the house.

The Burrow was built on what had once been an old, stone pigsty with floors added here and there till it stood at a height that Draco thought ought not to have been permitted. The many layers were quite distinguishable, each having been made with whatever materials were cheapest at the time of their purchase. Draco hated the house.He pulled open the flimsy backdoor onto the tempting aromas of Mrs. Weasley's cooking—which even he had to admit was good—and a kitchen full of Weasleys, all seated around the scrubbed, wooden table.

Conversation stopped when he entered, and the Weasleys' redheads turned as one to watch him. The children's faces grew hard, their eyes narrowed. They'd been talking about him; Draco knew it, and he could not stop his eyes from returning their glare.

"Go wash up, Draco," Mrs. Weasley said, pushing past him to attend to the food still on the hob, trying to ignore the tension that had entered the room with them, but it was visible in the set of her shoulders, her grip on her wand.

Draco shot the table full of Weasleys a last venomous glare, then marched across the kitchen and up the crooked stairs to the toilet sink.

Subtlety was not a trait that any of the Weasleys had acquired, nor was tact. Did they have to be so obvious? He'd know, he'd guess that the children still hated him, that their parents weren't thrilled to have him there, even if he hadn't overheard snippets of their arguments, but hearing it destroyed any chance of delusion. It didn't make adjusting to the situation any easier for him; he didn't like them either. _Bloody Gryffindors_, Draco thought before catching himself. Since March, since he'd met Alana O'Toule, it had become harder for him to insult the Gryffindors as a whole. _But this is true_, he reminded himself. _Even Alana—_

But he didn't really want to compare Alana to the Weasleys. It only emphasized everything that he hated about the Weasleys. He twisted the knob of the sink, forcing the water to come gushing from the faucet's end. Avoiding the mirror, he watched the jet for a moment. He had to sympathize with the water as it battered against the sink walls, found itself trapped in a steel depression, sank hopelessly into the drain.

_Ugh, get a _grip_, Malfoy. Stop anthropomorphizing the water. You can't be _that_ lonely._

But Draco was lonely. Odd though he had found it at first after his years alone, he had grown used to being greeted by a smile, to finding a seat saved for him, to conversation always there when he wanted it, even to sympathy and concern.

Draco forced his hands under the jet of icy water and shivered. Eleven days with the Weasleys, surrounded by their hate had not robbed him of his ability to feel. He still had that to look forward to.

Hands numb and the earth rushing down the drain, Draco returned to the brightly lit kitchen. He sat down and accepted the scrambled eggs and fruit pudding that Mrs. Weasley passed him. They were both cold. Draco ate in silence, with his head down.

"Any sign of the giant yet?" Fred wondered, pointing to the _Daily Prophet_ beside his father's plate.

Mr. Weasley shook his head. A town in Somerset had been torn apart the previous week, and the damage suggested, according to the _Prophet_, giant involvement, though the Weasleys all thought that Death Eaters were ultimately responsible. The town was near enough to the Burrow to pique the interest of all of them. "They're expanding the search."

"And is anyone else..."

There'd been two deaths the previous week, two women, one of them a high-ranking Ministry employee, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Amelia Bones. Both murders seemed to have shaken the Weasleys.

"No," Mr. Weasley said firmly. He hesitated before adding, "No one's heard of any others. No one else as of last night."

Draco looked up. He had heard the Weasleys slipping out late last night. The raised voices of the twins had called him to the door, had tempted him to open it onto the landing, just a crack.

"_Let us come. We're of age!"_

"_You'll not come till I think you're old enough to join_," Mrs. Weasley had snapped.

"_Dumbledore would let us come."_

"_Dumbledore's not your mother!"_

"_You can't keep us out forever!"_

Eleven days was long enough for Draco to guess where the older Weasleys had been going. Draco had heard about the Order of the Phoenix, the organization that Dumbledore headed devoted to defeating the Dark Lord. The Death Eaters had suspected that the Weasleys were members. Draco was almost ready now to confirm their suspicions.

"Arthur!" Mrs. Weasley snapped.

"They have a right to know that, Molly," he returned shortly.

What did the Order do exactly? Draco wondered.

Perhaps to avoid looking at his wife, Mr. Weasley looked around the table. "Also, Harry will be here Saturday morning. Dumbledore's bringing him."

"Harry's coming?" Ginerva, the Weasleys' only daughter, asked, sitting up straighter in her chair.

"This soon?" Ron beamed.

"Yes."

Draco's heart sank as the Weasleys' smiles grew. His stomach knotted. His moist pudding changed to cardboard in his mouth. Living with the Weasleys was torture enough, but Harry Potter was another monster entirely, and one that he wasn't sure that he could face just now—bolder, crueler, and with more right to hate him, to suspect him, to punish him—and more, Draco admitted grudgingly to himself, for him to admire. Potter's defeat of, his escapes from the Dark Lord were legendary. How many days, Draco wondered, would he have to live under Potter's eye? With no one to come between them?

He remembered Potter, his eyes smouldering, black and alive with fire, leaning across the table on fisted hands, snarling,_ "Maybe, I can prove you're his spy with three months without your girlfriend to meddle, without Snape, without Dumbledore." _He remembered Potter sputtering,_ "I'll kill you, Malfoy. When I'm done with Voldemort—or if I get the chance at you first— If you hurt any one of them—so much as one scratch—"_

"I have to get to work," Mr. Weasley said, checking his watch. Draco jumped, jerked away from the memory of a sneering Potter.

"When will you be home?"

"Late. Not in time for dinner, Molly." Mr. Weasley had only days earlier been promoted to Head of the new Office for the Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects. Already the job had begun to take its toll on him. He came home late. The bags beneath his eyes had begun to deepen.

"Arthur," Mrs. Weasley sighed.

He stood and kissed his wife on the cheek. "Think about what I said last night, Molly," Draco heard him say.

Percy, who worked at the Ministry of Magic as well, as Junior Undersecretary to the Minister, followed. Percy was under a lot of strain recently; it showed in his frown as he hugged his mother and moved toward the back door after his father. Fudge had been shouted out of office and had been replaced by Minister Scrimgeour, the former Head of the Auror office. The new Minister was still deciding whom to keep on. Until things calmed down, Percy couldn't be sure of his job.

Mrs. Weasley stared out the back window until both of them had vanished. When she turned away, her expression was anxious and her voice wavered just a little as she said, "I have to go sort through the laundry," and hurried from the kitchen.

This left Draco alone with Ron, Ginny, Fred, and George. He looked up at the redheads. They were all watching him too.

"Maybe I should—" Draco started, setting down his fork, making to get up.

"Sure, Malfoy, run," Ron said. His eyes were icy blue and narrowed.

"Harry's coming," Ginny said.

"The least you could do is tell us what you know," Fred put in.

"I know nothing." Draco didn't. Three nights since the end of the O.W.L.s, since Potter had collapsed in the Great Hall, since he had disappeared, Draco had been kept awake, his arm on fire, the fire sinking into his bones till he had been sure that the heat would cause them to crack as he had ignored the pain, ignored the call. The most recent time, he had lain in a dark and unfamiliar room, in a bed that didn't feel like his. The pain had been blinding, sickening. He had bitten back shouts, moans, and worse as the pain had grown, till it roared in his ears, as it had lessened slowly to a dull ache, as it had finally faded, leaving him weak, shaking, and exhausted. He knew the Dark Lord was talking to his Death Eaters—and more frequently than he had ever done. He had no idea what he was saying to them.

Ron cackled. "Was that a confession?"

"Shut up, Weasel. I'm not stupid. I know what your brother—"

Mrs. Weasley was back. They all dropped their heads again. Draco stuffed a forkful of rubbery egg into his mouth. Mrs. Weasley turned to pour herself a second mug of tea.

Ron leaned forward to whisper to Draco, before his mother turned back toward them, while she wouldn't see, while she was too distracted to hear, "I don't believe you."

The words closed around Draco's stomach like a fist.

Draco hurried to finish his breakfast and fled as soon as he thought that it wouldn't appear cowardly. He didn't want to be in the room with them anymore. He rarely could stand them for long. Around them, his muscles tensed, his hand was quick to jump to his pocket, looking for his wand. Sometimes Draco could convince himself that, if he stayed in a room too long with the Weasley children, the air would begin to taste of ozone, warning them all of an approaching storm. That much tension was just not good—for anyone.

Draco shut the door of his bedroom behind him, took a moment to be still, to listen to the quiet. This was a kinder quiet. Far enough away from the Weasleys, he could appreciate it. If he strained his ears, he could hear songbirds in the garden. They were quieter than the seagulls that flew past his bedroom window at Malfoy Manor, but they didn't have to compete with the crash of waves against the cliff-face.

Draco let out a breath and took a step into the bedroom, letting his eyes wander over the features that still looked strange. The bedroom almost seemed to go out of its way to remind Draco that it wasn't his. It was a horrid yellow color, one that Draco never would have allowed on his walls. A poster of an Egyptian pyramid was affixed to one of the otherwise blank walls. Draco had never been to Egypt. This room had once belonged to the eldest Weasley son, Bill, who was in Egypt now, working for Gringotts as a Curse-Breaker. Draco had found some old schoolwork of Bill's on a shelf in the closet, all bearing near perfect grades, and under a loose floorboard he had discovered a few of his treasured items: a Gobstones set, several yellowed love-letters that Bill had hidden from his parents, and the letter from Hogwarts announcing Bill's appointment to Head Boy.

Draco wondered, as he crossed the room, as he sank onto the bed, laid his hand on the hand-stitched quilt, what Bill would say if he knew that a Malfoy was sleeping in his bed. He wondered if his parents had told him.

Draco looked once more at the poster. He found this tacky adornment rather useful. As an invisible sun rolled slowly across the sky, the pyramid's shadow shifted position. The pyramid worked almost like a sundial, correctly revealing the time in Egypt. Though this was, of course, quite the wrong time in Britain, it was still an accurate measure of the passage of time, and Draco had often counted hours by it.

The room was just above Mr. and Mrs. Weasley's and just below Percy's, the eldest son still living at home. Percy had been Head Boy in Draco's third year. He didn't like rules to be broken. Draco supposed that the Weasleys had given him Bill's room because it allowed them to keep him under the strictest watch. Draco tried not to resent it. He reminded himself that this room was about the farthest from Ron, who lived at the top of the house. He had to appreciate that. And it was much easier to tiptoe downstairs and outside past one bedroom than—how many were there in the Burrow? Draco hadn't been able to explore the house much. He was barred from any room but Bill's, the living room, loo, pantry, and kitchen. He had probed them for secrets. He hadn't found anything interesting.

Draco let his eyes roam the room again. They passed over the surface of the heavy desk that was pushed beneath the poster. A few letters lay sprawled across it. Letters from Alana. His eyes swung to the window. It was her turn. But the skies were owl-free. Only the fog tapped silently on the glass.

Draco hated to keep those letters out in the open, but he hated to hide them. He needed the reminder that somewhere there was someone who wanted to know that he was all right. Alana's letters were full of prying questions, though, too. _"How are you?" _was followed by, _"How are the Weasleys?" "Are you having fun?"_ or _"Have you played any Quidditich?"_ Draco had to dodge these questions when he wrote back to her. She had such hopes that he would return to Hogwarts in September having patched up a seven hundred-year-old blood feud. Impossible, he knew.

Draco sighed, reached for the book that he'd left on the bedside table, and lay down on his stomach. He opened to his marked page, but his eyes were drawn to the window, outside. He hated it here. But he couldn't leave. And he hated that more than he hated being here. He hated being trapped. Again.

_A/N: A background chapter. The next one's more exciting. I'm already well into it. :)_

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	2. Come Hell or High Water

Cowardly though it was, Draco couldn't keep himself from devising schemes to avoid Potter as Saturday approached. None of the Weasleys had mentioned what time exactly they expected Dumbledore and Potter to arrive, which made it hard to plan.

The house was still quiet when he woke on Saturday. The sky was still grey when he looked out the window onto the garden. Fog pushed against the glass. Draco tried to convince himself that it was the sight of that that made his stomach twist, but as he pushed back the quilt, as he crossed to the closet, he knew that it wasn't.

Saturday morning and Potter would be descending on the Burrow, on him at any moment.

Draco grabbed his cloak and the book off the nightstand and crept down the stairs. Mrs. Weasley must still have been asleep. The kitchen was empty. The grate was empty and cold. Draco was used to seeing the Burrow like that. He was often up this early. He pulled out a seat at the table, lit a candle, and opened the book.

"Draco?"

Draco looked up when Mrs. Weasley came down perhaps half an hour later, tying closed a green dressing gown. "Good morning, Mrs. Weasley."

"What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for you."

Mrs. Weasley's hands flew to her hips, her eyes sparking.

"I hoped you wouldn't mind if I ate breakfast early," he admitted.

Mrs. Weasley's eyes narrowed further.

"Just a bowl of cereal," Draco hurried. "I don't want you to make anything. But I didn't want to take anything without permission, either."

Mrs. Weasley hesitated. "You'll be here all summer, Draco. You may as well act like one of the family. Help yourself." She turned her back on him to ready breakfast for everyone else.

Draco replaced the parchment bit he was using as a bookmark and with a little help from Mrs. Weasley found everything he needed for a cereal breakfast. He ate alone and in silence while Mrs. Weasley fried sausages, scrambled eggs, toasted bread, and even ground coffee.

A loud laugh clattered down the crooked steps with the sound of dashing feet. Ron's voice followed, bellowing, "Harry's here!"

Draco stiffened. Here? Already?

Mrs. Weasley shook her head. "That boy..."

"Mrs. Weasley, may I go?" Draco asked, putting down a spoonful of cornflakes. His appetite was gone. He watched the doorway, waiting, tense.

"Now? Don't you want to say, 'hel—"

"No," Draco said firmly.

Mrs. Weasley hesitated, then nodded. Draco dashed his dishes to the sink, scooped up the book and cloak and was out the door just as Ron was entering the room, saying, "Mum, why didn't you tell us?"

Draco didn't stay to hear the answer. He swung the cloak over his shoulders and hurried across the garden to the wall. He would spend the day as far away from Potter as possible. Or, he amended, pulling the cloak more tightly around himself to fend off the chill, at least until Potter was done with breakfast. Maybe Potter would follow Ron back up the steps, and Draco could sneak inside again?

Draco could not see into the kitchen from his seat on the wall. He had the book open, but his eyes more often strayed across the garden to the backdoor. He feared it would open. He feared Potter would come and find him. Once or twice, as he looked, he thought he saw a red head (from here he could not tell whose) peeking out the back window toward him, but the door stayed shut.

The cold fog sank through his cloak, through his clothes, and the longer he stayed outside in it, the more he realized that he would have to face Potter eventually, that he would not be able to avoid him forever, not if they were living in the same house, not for the next two months. He felt his heart sinking, dragging his head, his gaze, his frown with it till he was staring morosely at the toes of his boots.

Two months? Could he survive two months? With the Weasleys? With Potter?

A low _hoo _startled him into looking up.

Three owls were soaring down toward the back window. One of them looked at him as they swooped lower and broke course. It landed beside Draco on the wall and stuck out its leg. Draco didn't recognize the owl. He didn't think it belonged to Alana. So who had written him? for the name on the envelope was his.

Draco slipped the letter off, and the owl took off again. It did not expect a reply. Draco turned the parchment roll in his hands. It bore the seal of the Ministry of Magic.

Draco slit it open and read the headline: 'Ordinary Wizarding Level Results.'

With a swoop of dread, he scanned the list.

Ancient Runes: E

Astronomy: A

Care of Magical Creatures: P

Charms: E

Defense Against the Dark Arts: A

Herbology: A

History of Magic: E

Potions: O

Transfiguration: A

Eight O.W.L.s. It was better than he had hoped, since his education had been interrupted last year, since he had struggled to catch up on his studies at Hogwarts, studies the Ministry of Magic expected sixteen-year-old wizards to know. He had hoped that practicing the Dark Arts might translate into more strength fighting them. Surely no one there could describe the Unforgivables as well as he could—well, maybe Potter could describe the effects. But then, those were N.E.W.T. level anyhow and hadn't been on the exam. He thought he might blame Potter for the E in History of Magic. And he knew he'd gotten marked down in the Charms practical because of Potter; he had interrupted his Levitation Charm. That made him feel a little better about the marks. But he still didn't think he'd be able to take more than four classes at N.E.W.T. level. And he wasn't sure what sort of career one could have with Potions, History of Magic, Charms, and Ancient Runes.

He shivered again in the fog as he imagined showing these marks to his father. _"A P, Draco?"_ he heard his father sneer in his mind almost immediately. His father wouldn't care that it was in Care of Magical Creatures, that the class was taught by Hagrid.

But his father was in Azkaban. Draco was showing him nothing. He folded up the paper and slipped it between the pages of his book.

Draco looked again at the back window of the house. The other two owls must have been Potter's and Ron's results. He wondered how they'd done. He wondered if it was too much to hope that their schedules would be unable to overlap, that he might escape them entirely in the fall.

It was ten o'clock before Draco decided that it would be safe to reenter the house. He closed the book and crossed the garden again, watching the window for faces, watching the door lest he should be met halfway. The fog seemed to tangle around his feet as he walked, and it tried to follow him through the flimsy backdoor.

The kitchen was mercifully empty when he entered it. The reprieve could not bring a smile to his face, though. He took off the cloak, damp with fog, and crept up the crooked stairs. To his room, then. He'd hide out there till lunch—till dinner if he could, when he was sure Mrs. Weasley would make him sit down with Potter.

Draco sat down on the bed. He tried to read a little more, but his mind was drifting back over the years, over the events that had caused and widened the rift between him and Potter, that made him now so skittish in his territory (the Burrow felt like Potter's territory far more than it felt like Draco's).

"_You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there."_

"_I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself, thanks."_

"_I'd be careful if I were you, Potter. You'll go the same way as your parents. Hang out with riff-raff like the Weasleys and it'll rub off on you."_

"_Give it here, Malfoy. Give it here or I'll knock you off your broom! No Crabbe and Goyle up here to save your neck."_

Potter had decided that Draco couldn't be trusted—had decided early on. Genuine warnings, ribbing had become genuine hatred in Potter's mind.

And then Draco had watched as Potter had attracted his own following, as he had ducked in and out of trouble, riding on his fame, and something Draco couldn't name—charisma? But that wasn't quite it. People liked Potter—just liked him—and their eyes seemed to glaze over all of his flaws—well, all his flaws but the one on his forehead, the lightning bolt-shaped scar that marred his boyish features, the trophy of his triumph. Curiosity had turned to annoyance and had sunk into envy and then further into hatred—hatred to match Potter's hate for him—but Draco's was tainted by something else. Draco had watched Potter closely, hating him, looking for fuel for his hatred. The more that he learned about the boy, the more he hated him, but he wasn't untouched by that something of Potter's. Nobility it was maybe. Potter cared for people. He protected people. Potter had reasons—good, unselfish reasons for everything he did. Draco hated it. He hated that, despite everything Potter had done to him, despite all the flaws that he saw, he wasn't free to fully hate Potter.

Potter had hurt Draco—Draco personally. Mostly he had taken from Draco the one thing that Draco had looked forward to during the summers. Draco couldn't forget that it was Potter who had set Dobby free. Having seen the elf, Draco had to admit that he did seem happier, and he felt that he ought to be happy for him. At Hogwarts, he was happy for him; they were able to be together again at Hogwarts. But summers had definitely become bleaker, lonelier since Dobby had left the Manor.

And Potter, stupid, ungrateful Potter was always complaining, was always pitied for his greatest blessing; that nettled Draco. Potter had no family. Draco's back and heart were bent with the pressure of carrying his family's honor, all his parents' intentions for him, all the family secrets. Potter had to deal with none of that. There were no parents to punish him. And he complained. Stupid, ignorant Potter.

The darkness closed in around him as the hours passed and day faded, as he read a paragraph here and there. That darkness seemed to gather on Draco's skin, darken it, and sink inside of him. He could feel it in his blood. He could feel a coldness gathering around his heart. Draco folded his arms around himself and bent his head beneath its weight. Potter's hair was dark as the darkest of the shadows.

A warm glow battled the shadows by the doorway, a small sliver of the good feelings that filled the rest of the house, that brightened the Weasleys' smiles, that echoed in their shouts—in Ron's shout this morning. "_Harry's here!"_ Draco had been able to hear Ron's great, crooked grin in those words. Genuine happiness. Draco looked toward that glow. He willed it to fight off the shadows. He willed it to cross the room. He wondered what the light would feel like in his blood.

He jumped at a light knock on the wood that preceded the door being flung open. The light flooded the room, made Draco blink, throw up his hands with a noise like "Blagh!"

"You're sitting in the dark."

Draco lowered his hands to see the black shape of Ginerva Weasley in the doorframe. She was blacker than the shadows had been till he blinked several times, till his eyes began to adjust to the warm light from the hallway. "Is that not allowed?" he countered.

Ginny sighed, shook her head. "Mum sent me to get you for dinner."

"But you'd rather head back empty-handed?"

"Obviously. Just get down there. I have to go get everyone else." Ginny turned and stormed away. As she did, her hair seemed to ignite, the light lacing her curls with trails of glowing embers.

Draco waited till he thought she might have turned the corner in the stairs before getting up off the bed and crossing to the door, which she had left open. Shutting the door firmly behind himself, locking in the darkness, he slunk off toward the kitchen, trying not to be excited by the thick smells of sausages, potatoes, carrots, and—could it really be?—chocolate cake.

Sure enough the kitchen table was laid for a feast. Mr. Weasley had hurried home from work to make it in time for dinner and he sat at the head of the table. Draco sank down into his seat, and he, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were soon joined by Percy, who raised his pointed nose in the air as he entered the room, closing his eyes with a smile. "Smells wonderful, Mum," he said, pulling out his own chair.

"Thank you, dear."

Percy sat to Mr. Weasley's left, and Mrs. Weasley to his right. Draco had taken a seat as far away from them as possible. Fred and George sat to Percy's right. When Ron, Potter, and Ginny entered the room. They saw the empty seats remaining, looked at one another in disgust, and seemed to have a silent battle before Ginny sank moodily down beside Draco with Ron across from him. Potter cast Draco a look of the deepest loathing as he sank into his seat between Mrs. Weasley and Ginny. Ginny pulled a face and glared at Ron.

Mrs. Weasley tried to keep conversation light as she passed her dishes around the table. "Oh Harry dear," she prattled, "it is so good to see you again. But you look so thin. Here—you really must try this. No, dear, more than that. Ron's been so worried about you—well, we all have been after—but—"

"Thanks, Mrs. Weasley," Potter said, but he kept his head down as he heaped mashed potatoes onto his plate. Ginny tried to pass the sausages around Draco to Ron, but Draco snatched them back, with a narrow-eyed look at Ginny.

"How're things in the Muggle world?" Mr. Weasley wondered. "Have they, ah, noticed anything?"

"Yeah," Potter muttered, looking up at Mr. Weasley. "They have. They couldn't keep that attack in Somerset out of the papers, could they? Or the bridge collapsing. Or Madam Bones... and Emmeline Vance. Is it true?"

"I'm afraid so, dear," Mrs. Weasley sighed.

"And has anyone else—"

"No," Mr. Weasley said again, but he did not look as confident anymore. It had been five days since Draco had heard the Weasleys sneaking off to their Order of the Phoenix meeting. Fifteen days. Draco had been here fifteen days.

"What is the—" Potter hesitated, glanced at Draco. "What are we doing? The wizards, I mean." He kept Mr. Weasley's gaze. Draco glanced around the room, wondering. The Order of the Phoenix? Is that who Potter meant? Ron noticed and looked away. Draco listened more carefully.

"We're doing what we can, Harry. But he's moving quickly—very quickly. We don't have the intelligence we'd like even with— Well, he's hard to fight."

"Git," George muttered.

"Stop that," Mrs. Weasley snapped.

"I don't care who he's helping," George said, "he's still a git."

"You do care," Mrs. Weasley countered. "I won't have you calling him names—not when he's done so much for us."

"I think he knows more than he's telling us," Fred complained.

"Well you can't expect him to tell us everything, can you, Fred? He has to stick to what's common knowledge. If he didn't, it'd be too clear to him who—"

"He could still tell us—and tell us not to act on it. Just so we're prepared."

"See?" Mrs. Weasley thundered. "This is precisely why I won't let you join! You don't understand—either of you," she said, pointing a short finger toward her twins, whose expressions had become dark and mutinous.

Draco looked around the room again, looking for another weak link, wondering whom they had been talking about. He was distracted by Percy. Percy was looking down at his food, stirring the mashed potatoes, as if he wasn't listening, as if he didn't care. But then again, the conversation had turned a little, and—Draco let his eyes continue around the table—Potter was glaring into his generous portion of potatoes too.

"Have you heard from your father?" Potter looked up as if he had sensed Draco's gaze—maybe he had.

Mrs. Weasley and the twins stopped arguing. The room went still around them.

Draco started. Potter's eyes were as intense as he had remembered, and there was a glint of malice, of anger in them now, darkening them. "No." It came out on a breath. "No, I haven't," he said, forcing more strength into his voice. "And I haven't gotten the chance to thank you for that, Potter."

Potter snorted.

Potter's adventure the night of their last O.W.L. exam had ended, somehow, in the arrest of Draco's father, along with a number of other wizards—Death Eaters—Draco's uncle Roldolphus, Roldolphus' brother Rabastan, a number of the Death Eaters whom the Dark Lord had broken out of Azkaban in February. They probably all deserved to be locked up—probably. But Azkaban... He had to force back a shiver. Potter would see it.

Potter was bringing this up to spite him. In place of the shiver, Draco could feel the heat rising through his body. He fisted his hands and let them go. Well, two could play at that... "I never got to ask you either: What happened that night? How'd he get captured?"

Potter stiffened this time. His eyes flew to Draco and Draco didn't blame Ginny from shrinking back out the line of fire. Potter's mouth curled in a growl. Draco was surprised his teeth had not become pointed. "You don't ask about that, Malfoy. It's none of your busin—"

"As you've just so kindly pointed out, he's my father. That makes it my business."

"Boys!" Mrs. Weasley shouted.

Potter was not ready to yield. He held Draco's gaze and Draco saw his hand twitch as if it longed to dive into his pocket. Draco tried to remain calm, but his blood was boiling now that he sensed danger. He wanted to attack Potter before Potter could attack him. He did not dare look toward Mrs. Weasley to answer her, or around the table at Ron or Ginny. They had disappeared that night too. They might know what had happened. They might know why Potter was so furious—more furious at Draco than he was usually even. He kept his eyes on Potter, waiting, trying to anticipate.

"So it's okay for him to ask about my father, but I can't ask about—"

"Draco—enough. Harry—"

Potter was still not yielding.

"Harry Potter!"

Potter cringed—clearly he knew that tone of Mrs. Weasley's well—and turned to face her. Draco let out a breath that did nothing to release the tension that laced his back and shoulders, that raced down his arms to his fingers. He kept his narrowed eyes fixed on Potter's turned head.

"I expect better from you. I will not tolerate fighting at my table," Mrs. Weasley bawled. "From either of you," she added, her darkened eyes flying to Draco's. His eyes widened. Her eyes burned with a fire he'd seen in them only once before—when she'd gotten him to promise that he'd stay in sight of the house. He shrank a little beneath them again now. Potter had too. "Any of you," she added, sending her glare around the table. Even Mr. Weasley seemed to shrink. Percy brought his shoulders in and bent his red head again.

Mrs. Weasley's eyes flew once more around the table. "Ginny," she barked, and Ginny jumped. "You need more juice. What would you like?"

"Oh, er... Do we have any cranberry left?"

Dinner resumed after that. They all kept their heads bent over their plates. The chocolate cake did not taste as good as it had smelled earlier, but Draco suspected it had more to do with the acid that was still being siphoned from his blood, the knots in his shoulders, and the gloomier atmosphere of the Burrow as a whole than with Mrs. Weasley's baking.

xxxx

Draco ducked out of the kitchen as quickly as he could and climbed the dark, narrow steps alone. He kept his hand on the rail and didn't look at the walls, where hung framed pictures of the family. Even their photographed selves glared at him as he passed. Sometimes when he glanced up, he caught the boys' making rude hand gestures or reaching for miniature wands. It made him very uncomfortable, surrounded, outnumbered. His hand crept to his pocket and brushed the warm wood of his wand.

Potter remained at the table, talking to the Weasleys, long afterward. While Draco sat on the windowsill, while he looked out onto the fog-covered world, looked at the star-strewn sky, which was still devoid of letter-carrying owls, he listened to the others' footsteps on the stairs. He couldn't identify any of them by the footfalls yet. He guessed the lightest set was Ginny's, guessed that the twins would walk up the stairs together, but couldn't be certain.

He knew Potter and Ron when they came up together because he heard Weasley's groan.

"We can't make Ginny sit next to him every night. It wouldn't be fair to her."

Draco looked toward the door and realized he had not quite closed it properly. Exhaustion must have had him in its grips more than he had thought. Away from the table, away from the fight, adrenaline had forsaken him and dragged his energy away with it.

"Well, you're not making me sit next to him."

"We'll talk to Fred and George. They'll understand. Right?"

"Git," Potter growled. "How can Dumbledore just foist him on you? Why you? I know he thinks Malfoy's not the spying creep he is, but—"

"I know, mate. Believe me I know." Weasley paused. "It does seem really risky of Dumbledore. I mean, Malfoy—he's—well, his dad—and we're—"

"Your parents haven't bought his ruse though."

"No."

"So, what are we going to do about him?" They were right outside the door now.

Draco slipped silently from the sill and padded across the wooden floorboards.

"About Malfoy?"

He pressed his ear to the wood. Their voices would fade as they climbed the stairs.

"Yeah."

"What can we do, Harry? Dumbledore asked us to look after—"

Potter snorted with disgust—or maybe anger. "He's Malfoy. If we were going to look after him properly we'd take him out of action. Make sure he can't hurt anyone—ever."

"Harry, we can't... Kill him?"

Behind the door, tension raced across Draco's shoulders, down his arms. Kill him?

"Maybe not," Potter agreed and Draco let out a breath. "Dumbledore wouldn't like it, I suppose. But there's got to be something we can do. We can't let him get away with this..." Draco pressed his ear more firmly against the wood, but the sound of their footsteps was growing very faint now. "You'll have to tell m—"

Draco heard nothing more from either Potter or Weasley. After a minute, he pulled the door more firmly to and crossed to the bed in the dark. He sank down onto the mattress. He would keep his ears and eyes alert, watch the two of them, and hope he could stop them exacting their revenge. Draco drew his wand and laid it across his lap with a sigh.


	3. Through the Valley of the Shadow

Draco stood in the middle of a flat expanse of which the only borders seemed to be mountains so distant that their sharp peaks nearly faded beyond recognition into the starless night sky, a matte black, like low cloud cover, except that it felt more... empty. Cloudy skies were close; this was not. This gaped. The mountains looked like black teeth rising out of the rust red and powdery earth that covered the field where Draco stood. The earth looked just like the dried blood that they sometimes used in Potions and the idea sent a shiver through Draco, though the air was hot and... not humid, but thick. It smelled wrong, sulfurous. As Draco breathed in, the air stung his nose, his mouth, his lungs.

Draco looked again. For kilometers, all seemed to be flat, the plain not even broken by the groping fingers of a shrub's skeleton. It was as if nothing had ever lived here. Ahead of him, the dark sky faded to wine red and then into an even lighter brick just at the horizon, where the mountains were stark silhouettes, like the points of a crown.

Draco didn't like it here. The whole place felt wrong. He wanted out. But where was out? Was there an out?

What could he do? Standing here, he'd get no where. He moved forward, toward the lighter sky. As he walked, the air seemed to grow thicker around him. It congealed at the bottom of his lungs and sat there like lead. It weighed him down and it became harder and harder to breathe as he moved across the plain, keeping his eyes set on the black mountains, willing himself to believe even that they were growing larger, that he might be covering ground, that he might be getting nearer.

Left... right... left... right. He heard nothing. There was absolute silence. His feet on the powdery earth made no noise. Even the cotton legs of his pajamas did not seem to rustle in the dense air. It was eerie. Unnerving. He longed for the sight, the sound of another. He began to doubt that anything, that he could live long in this hostile climate. He wanted to know something besides himself lived still.

He grew lightheaded. The sulfurous air pushed the oxygen from his lungs, left his head pounding. His very blood seemed to be darkening beneath his pale skin. He was not sure whether its weight or its content bent his back as if an otherworldly power, some huge hand pressed down upon him.

He was bent nearly in half and almost tripped down the incline when he stumbled upon it. The plain, without any prior indication, began to slope downward.

Draco paused and raised his heavy head.

Down the slope, where the plain seemed to continue again, stood a pair of gold gates. No fence supported them, but only two, black marble plinths, upon which crouched dragonish gargoyles of onyx. Had he had the energy, he might have let out a joyful cry as he began to hurry, stumble, skitter down the small slope toward the gates. Here was some sign of another. Something else had been here before. Whoever it was had lived long enough to build this at least. But where were they? And why had they built nothing more? Maybe they had died after all. Maybe Draco was alone.

Draco put a hand out to touch the golden bars of the gate. He pushed. It didn't move. Locked.

Sadly, he turned and found himself face-to-face with one of the onyx gargoyles. It had bright eyes- emerald eyes, glittering as if alive, as if with fire. Draco was reminded of Potter and stumbled backward away from the statue with a sharp intake of bitter air. There was something wholly judgmental in the monster's glare. Draco couldn't say that he liked it. He dropped his eyes, feeling a flush creep into his cheeks.

Why he couldn't have said, but as he looked toward the rusty earth, images began to flash across his mind, as vividly as if a Legilimens, as if the Dark Lord had drawn them forward. He saw himself taunting Potter, taunting Weasley, cursing Longbottom. He saw himself bowing low in a dark room while the Dark Lord regarded him from the shadows, his father blocking the door. _"My lord, I will serve you as well as I can. How can I prove myself to you?"_ He felt again the brush of the Dark Lord's finger along his face, a loving and possessive gesture, and he shivered beneath it. He saw himself pitted again against Potter, against Weasley. He heard Snape say once more, as he often did now when he let his guard down for too long, _"He has called you many things, Draco. As precious as a wand, as powerful, and as useful. His second. His shield. His son. He cannot and will not lose you, Draco."_ He saw the Dark Lord, tempting him, _"You could punish them, Draco, make them pay for what they've done to you. You could have your father- Potter on their knees begging you for mercy. What can I get you, Draco? Tell me how to persuade you and I will do it. I could ensure her safety, if only-"_

A fanfare shattered the silence that had beaten upon him so relentlessly, shattered

the Legilimency curse, nearly shattered his eardrums. Draco threw his hands up against his ears and cried out in alarm. But when he looked up, it was to see that the gargoyle had dropped into an unmistakable bow. Stunned, Draco turned to find the other offering him the same genuflection. Draco stumbled backward as the gates swung open and through them he saw the most refreshing sight.

The avenue that swept away from the gates was cobbled with gold and wound away, further than he could make out. Magnificent mansions lined the street, mansions of all styles and all periods, each trying to outdo the previous one- castles with too many turrets to count, Greek porticos, long and low Renaissance buildings, Middle Eastern palaces with ogee arches, marble, gold, semiprecious stone. The gardens around the houses sparkled and shone with plants so exotic Draco had never seen pictures of them in his Herbology texts, nor could he have imagined them. Amethyst seemed to sway in the wind on long stalks while amber gleamed in the red light of the world and diamonds sparkled like berries on bushes. Golden fountains spewed water that looked red in the light. It was beautiful; Draco couldn't deny it, even as he felt something shift inside of him, something that wanted to look away, something that wanted to return to the barren plain, leave this magnificent city.

"Ah," said a low, gravelly voice, a voice that scraped against Draco's ears like nails. Draco jumped with surprise. "Draco Malfoy. I wondered when we'd be seeing you."

Draco looked around and saw a creature with skin the color of ash standing beside the gates, a large leather-bound book beneath his long arm and a quill in his long-fingered hand. His swirling, emerald eyes, like those of the gargoyles, like Potter's, glinted with internal fire as they fixed upon Draco. It didn't blink.

"Who are you?" Draco blurted out, his voice hoarse after such a long, arduous trek. "And how in hell do you know my name?"

The creature grinned, displaying very sharp teeth. "I'm called Bhaddeck," he said coolly, "and I am the gate-demon. We've been expecting you for quite some time, Draco Malfoy."

"Gate-demon?" Draco repeated uncertainly.

Bhaddeck the gate-demon nodded, then flipped his book open to a page that, except for a small, blank space toward the bottom, was entirely covered with red signatures written in a hundred different hands. He held out the book, and Draco took it, as he obviously was supposed to do. He glanced curiously back a few pages. Each page, like that Bhaddeck had turned to, was filled with names. From the looks of it, the list could have gone back eons, perhaps to the very formation of the world.

"That, Draco Malfoy-" Bhaddeck had horrible breath, Draco noticed. It stank of the sulfurous air and something else... something sweet and almost... like iron. "-is a record of every person who has ever entered through those gates behind you. You'll be number three billion, one hundred forty-eight million, six hundred thirty-two thousand, nine hundred eighty-one." So saying, the gate-demon held out the quill.

Draco peered uncertainly at it. The demon's hands were dry and filth-covered; the red soil of that place had worked its way into the wrinkles of his ash-colored skin. The quill itself was long, thin, and the crimson color of blood. Its golden tip, Draco noticed, was unusually sharp. He could have easily cut himself upon it.

"Go on," Bhaddeck urged, his grin broad, displaying even more fully his pointed fangs. "Take it."

Pushing aside his misgivings, Draco did as he was bidden.

Bhaddeck smiled. "Good," he said. He pointed one long finger toward the blank space after the final name. "Sign there," he commanded.

Draco lowered the sharp quill toward the paper, but realized, "I haven't any ink." He looked back up at the demon, who leered.

"Oh," Bhaddeck said softly, "you won't need any."

Shrugging, Draco lowered the pen to the paper. As the razor tip touched the paper, Draco felt a jolt surge through his fingers, into his hand, up his arm, to his heart. He jerked, paused, and looked at the demon.

"Go on," Bhaddeck said again.

Draco looked back down at the paper and began to write. Fire leapt from the tip. He winced as the heat of the small flame licked his fingers, burnt his hand. Was he going to burn his name into the book? But the ink of the other names was red, not the mahogany he would expect of scorched paper, and as the pen slid along the parchment and the thin line of fire burned down, he saw that his too was being written in a shining, red ink. His hand burned hotter, stung with the heat. Draco gritted his teeth together, but the heat on the back of his hand slackened his grip and the pain of it wound up his arm, snakelike, growing stronger.

Then it reached the Dark Mark and the new flame seemed to ignite the old brand on his skin.

Draco cried aloud. The pen dropped from his hand and landed, point down, in the soft earth, embedded in the dust. The book followed as Draco bent, clutching at his arm and shutting his eyes against a wall of flame that seemed to leap up to engulf him. He stumbled backward. The fire seemed to ring him. Through it, he could just make out, through watering eyes, the gate-demon, whose look of triumph had shattered and was replaced by one of mounting horror. He could just see the shadowy silhouettes of the mansions. But his throat was dry, his eyes itched and burned, his skin was surely being seared from his flesh. The heat was too much. His flesh would be burnt away from the bones. His bones would crack beneath the fire. He would fall and crumble to ash, the rust-red ash that blanketed the world. Draco jammed his eyes shut. _Lord_, he thought. _No._

The world was tipping away, the red light behind his shut lids fading, darkening, and he knew it was his own consciousness, not the fire, that dimmed. Draco fell to the soft ground. His fingers clawed into the earth as he tried to support himself, tried to master and overcome the pain, choking in air. His fingers brushed the tines of the scarlet pen he had dropped earlier. He could hear the gate-demon Bhaddeck shrieking, shouting curses in a strange, ancient tongue. The words- if they were words- scraped the inside of Draco's skull, tore at his ears, and seemed to hatch his skin, each syllable a whip-like cut. And above the demon's hissing and spitting, Draco heard moans and groans, cries, and shrieks, feared his own voice was being added to the wails, feared his cry would never end, that he would be absorbed into the cacophony, another number, another name in the demon's book. Damned.

But Draco tried to hold on to Bhaddeck's blatherskite, to the wails of the damned as he felt a cold wind whip at his hair, tear at his limbs. He had heard that sound before, the rush of speeding death, the _Avada Kedavra_ curse coming to claim its victim, and he knew even as his legs shook and crumpled beneath him, as his arms gave out, and his face hit the ground, as a complete blackness closed over his head, blocking even the blaze of the hellish fire from view, that he was dy-

Draco started up with a shout. The fire was real. His arm was on fire. The Mark burned. His hand leapt to the old wound, trying to tear at it. Draco shivered, shook, but by force of will, flattened his clawed fingers. His breaths came heavily. He gulped air that seemed cool after the pillar of flame, but still stung his lungs, wouldn't come easily. Sweat tangled his fine hair, dampened his buttoned, long-sleeved shirt. His eyes swung round the still unfamiliar bedroom in the Burrow, taking in the shadows of the desk, the stiff-backed chair, the nightstand. He saw the line of light from the hallway, but it seemed dim, almost dark after the fire of Hell.

_It's all right,_ he told himself._ A dream. A bad dream._

But, Draco thought, it wasn't all right. This pain was real. And his eyes burned, as if still blinking back that searing heat. Of course it wasn't all right. The Dark Lord was rising, gaining power, was meeting now with his Death Eaters. Draco pulled his legs up to his chin, wrapped his arms around them, holding himself together. He wouldn't sleep tonight, would lie awake trying to banish, to breathe through the pain, trying to forget the nightmare. Even now, as he blinked, fire leapt behind his eyes, fire to match the fire that seared the skin of his arm, was growing, biting deeper into him. He was burning still, still trapped in Hell. _"He cannot and will not lose you, Draco." "The Dark Lord keeps his own."_

He put his face against his knees and the pain pulsed behind his stinging eyes, behind his temple, as if even his brain threw itself against his skull, trying to break through and escape the fiery pain- the pain that would continue on through the night, that would grow till he thought once more that he would die of it, then would fade only slowly so that he hardly noticed, so that it would seem inescapable, undimming, until he finally fell asleep, exhausted, uncaring now about the pain, about the punishment, and then he might awake to find it gone.

He drew in a shuddering breath and blew it out through his teeth. His lungs still seemed leaden, laced with the poisonous air, burnt by the fire. How much damage had the dream caused him? How much was irreparable?

Draco recognized now what the gate-demon had been asking of him. He was meant to sign his name in the Book of Damned with blood- his own blood. "_Blood,"_ his father had once told him,_ "is a binding thing. It leaves no room for second thoughts, no chance of going back. What is once done by blood can never be undone." _Had Draco then condemned himself to an afterlife, to an eternity in Hell? Or had the Dark Lord, he corrected himself, done that? Had his father? But no, only he could take responsibility for that bit of signature, those bloody lines in the demon's book. He could have fought- like he was fighting the Dark Lord- like he was fighting his father's expectations.

Draco took another sharp breath into his singed lungs. He gave himself over to the shivering fit that tried to take him. He was already tired. Already his bones began to ache with the heat of the Mark on his arm, the Dark Lord's curse. Already he wished he could black out. He jammed his eyes shut, but of course, that didn't lessen the pain, only locked himself in a world that held nothing else, just fire- fire in his bones, in his flesh, in his mind.

The door inched open and Draco threw open his eyes onto a spill of light, afraid Hell had found him again, his fists balled by his sides. In as much pain as he was in, he was certain he hadn't fallen asleep so this fire, this brightness-

"Draco?"

Draco blinked and the fire began to fade till he could see Mrs. Weasley's stout outline, her flyaway curls singed orange by the hall light. She was standing in the doorway, had pushed the door of his bedroom open.

"Doesn't anyone in this bloody house knock?" he wondered. It occurred to him then that he ought to be furious at the intrusion, but he felt only a buzzing annoyance; he hadn't the strength to fight the moans, to fight off the shiver that wanted to wrack his body, to keep the fire from utterly destroying him, and to be angry with the Weasleys. Draco shut his eyes again, turned his face away, hoping the Weasleys wouldn't sense his weakness, not knowing what they'd do to him if they realized he was powerless- truly powerless against them. He looked into one of the darker corners of the room, opened his eyes onto cool shadows that he couldn't feel. He felt so exposed beneath the light of the hallway...

"Draco, we-" Draco looked back toward the door. Mrs. Weasley took a couple tentative steps into the bedroom. As she stepped away, her husband was revealed looking around the doorframe, tall, the bald patch at the top of his head gleaming silver in the light. "We thought we heard a shout," Mrs. Weasley continued. Her voice quivered. "And-"

Draco forced himself to look away again. She was getting nearer. If he looked at her, she'd notice, she'd know he was weak. "Hearing things," he muttered.

There was a moment's pause. "I don't think so," Mrs. Weasley said quietly.

"They say insanity is hard to accept. You'd hardly be the first who struggled."

"Draco." Mrs. Weasley's voice was suddenly sharp. Draco flinched away from the flick of his name, like a whip winging toward him, and bit his lip. A tongue of flame surged up through him, leapt up his throat, stinging and burning. His throat closed around it. Draco told himself his body was defending itself, that his throat closed to deaden the fire, but he trembled, he shook beneath the heat, and his oxygen-deprived lungs shrank in his chest. Draco felt his last defense, his sharp words, catch in that flame. They turned to ash in his throat and tasted bitter. His face scrunched up at the unpleasant taste, the pain. He drew a quick, fierce hand across his dry, itching eyes.

"Draco," softer this time. Draco looked up. She'd taken a few more steps into the room. Mr. Weasley's lanky form was now framed in the doorway, one hand on the jamb to brace himself. "Are you-" she tried, "are you all right?"

Draco choked out the word, "Fine."

"I- You're not." This time she padded on slippered feet across the floor. Draco turned helplessly away. He heard the bedsprings groan in protest to her extra weight as she sank down onto the mattress in front of him. Mrs. Weasley reached out and laid a hand on his closed fist. He drew a sharp breath, wincing. The added weight of her hand sent another spike of heat racing up his arm, lancing deep into the already burned skin around the Dark Mark. He pulled his hand fiercely back from beneath her hand, cradled it near his chest, away from her. Mrs. Weasley did not try to stop him. "Was it a nightmare? Talk to me, Draco," she said. "Maybe we can help."

"You can't. You can't help. I don't need help." He meant it to be venomous. It wasn't. Even he heard the false, petulant pout of a child, bitter about being sent to bed. Draco looked down at his own hand in the spill of light from the open doorway, unclenched his stiff fingers. His nails had bitten four dark crescents into the white flesh of his palm. Draco frowned.

"Draco," Mrs. Weasley gasped. "You're bleeding."

"I- I don't remember- I didn't feel-" But the cuts weren't bad. He closed his hand over them again, this time more carefully, to hide the evidence, but another spurt of flame made him draw a sharp breath, made his fingers curl again, the nails rake fresh furrows into his skin.

"Stop that." Mrs. Weasley reached out and took his hand in hers, holding it open, pressing down on his fingers with her thumb.

"I can't help it," Draco muttered. Her fingers were stubbier than his, looked dark against his own, darker from sunshine and dirt, he guessed. He could feel the calluses of hard work on her hand, in the cradle of her palm and the vise of her fingers and thumb. Her hand was rough against his own, strange. Her grip was strong and he was weak. He shivered. The wall he had built up against the pain was breaking. He would not be able to hold back the symptoms much longer. His head ached and he did not think now that the bright flashes before his eyes were the aftereffects of his nightmare. Nausea was building in his stomach. Mrs. Weasley would feel his tremors and hear his tiniest moan when she was this close to him. Mrs. Weasley would know. "Let me go," he mumbled.

"So you can hurt yourself some more?"

"I'm not doing it on purpose."

"But you are doing it. Tell me why. Maybe I can make it stop."

"You can't. No one can. It'll be hours."

"Hours?"

"Till the pain stops. Mrs. Weasley, let me go."

Mrs. Weasley stroked his splayed fingers with her thumb. He was sure the touch was light, sure it was even meant kindly, but he winced beneath the caress.

"Mrs. Weasley-" he started again, his voice tight now with the effort of holding back his cries, from fighting the fire that gnawed his bones and flesh. She stopped stroking him and looked into his face, his expression, he knew, twisted by the heat of the fire. "I- I can't tell you," he breathed. He was sure, once the Weasleys knew him for what he was, knew he was a Marked man, that he wouldn't be allowed to stay, even at Dumbledore's behest. Or had Dumbledore already told them? Did Dumbledore even know he was Marked?

"Can't?"

"Can't." As much as he hated it at the Burrow, as much as he felt trapped here, with Ron, with Potter, he knew he had no where else to go, would be captured or killed before he got far. Draco didn't know the lower counties well, knew them hardly at all. And his Apparition was inexpert. He wouldn't risk long jumps. From here his best chance would be to hide himself in London, but the Death Eaters knew London too. Maybe if he had a map...

"Fine." She let go of his hand. Instantly, the fingers curled back in upon themselves, the tension snaked back up his arms. She looked at him sadly. "I only want to help you, Draco," she said now and Draco shivered, remembering a different voice, beneath the dappled shade of beech leaves, the sun striking sparks off the lake water. He remembered the pain like glass shards of his broken defenses, of his reopened wounds. And he remembered a warm hand on his, dark eyes shining with tears. Mrs. Weasley's eyes were dark- like Alana's. "When you're ready..." She got up and-

"Just like that?" Draco wanted to know.

Mrs. Weasley turned, but backlit now, Draco couldn't read her expression. "What?"

"No threats? No curses? Not even a jinx to loosen my tongue?"

"Of- of course not." She sounded actually appalled by the suggestion. "Where would you get an idea like that?"

Draco looked away. Something twisted inside of him, an old shadow of fear as he looked up at-

"Oh," Mrs. Weasley said now. "Draco."

Draco heard her footsteps coming nearer again. But now his eyes itched. Now he felt even more ill than he had done. Something in her voice made him uneasy, want her away. "No," he said. "Forget it. Forget I said anything. It's nothing."

Mrs. Weasley hesitated. "No. That isn't nothing."

"Why?" Draco threw his arms around his bent knees again, stared at a dark corner, and tried to push back the memories that crowded into his brain, tried to add their pain to the pain he felt now. He tried to banish the shouts and the disappointment. "Why shouldn't it be nothing?"

"Well, Draco, nobody should- nobody has the right-"

Draco looked up at her now with hard eyes. "They'd every right. I gave them every right." Draco dropped his gaze again. His fingers wound into the quilt. "I'm not an easy child. Surely you've noticed. I don't like being told what to do. And I don't learn."

"That isn't the way to- That's not how to teach- Draco, it's not right." She sank back onto the bed. "Who? Was it You-Know-Who? What did he do to you?"

"I'd rather not say," he mumbled, not lifting his eyes. Now the bridge of his nose, the back of his neck, the scars that Madam Pomfrey had healed stung.

Mr. Weasley spoke from somewhere nearby. He had come into the room too. "You make it sound like it wasn't just You-Know-Who," he observed.

Draco wrinkled his nose, hesitated, shook his head. "Course not."

"Who- who else?" Mrs. Weasley wanted to know.

Confusion, an inkling of doubt, malaise made him ask, "What do you mean? Don't you? Doesn't every parent?"

"No."

"Every father?" Draco looked up over his knees at Mr. Weasley, whose usually repulsed expression had softened, as if the ice in his eyes had melted.

"Never," Mr. Weasley said firmly. "I've never- I would never- not to my kids." He shook his head, shut his eyes. "Not to any kid for that matter."

"Your father cursed you, Draco? He threatened you?"

"I thought... I thought that was how... He's not supposed to?"

"No. Draco-"

"But then..." Horror was dawning on Draco now. He'd disappointed him again. Already he could see his livid face as he bore down on Draco, wand drawn. This was just like the time he'd said too much in front of the Minister of Magic, when his father had thought he'd been too openly knowledgeable about the Dark Arts- though, if Fudge had noticed, he hadn't let on. "I shouldn't have said anything," he told the Weasleys quickly. "Please just forget it. If I- I think I'm ill. I'm not making sense. I'm-"

Mrs. Weasley took his hand in hers. "Shh..."

"Please, you won't tell? You won't tell anyone? It's one of my great faults. I never know when to hold my tongue and he's tried- he's tried so many times to get me to learn, but it just won't take. There's always something I know that I don't know that I'm not supposed to or- Please." He looked up to meet Mrs. Weasley's dark eyes, then Mr. Weasley's blue. "He'd- he'd kill me. I've messed up so many times and he must hate me now, after I went against him, after I ran away. He- he wouldn't-"

"Shh," Mrs. Weasley said again. She let go his hand, and opened her arms wide. "Come here."

"No," he breathed, shaking his head. He was beginning to shake once more. He could feel the tremor in his fingers, in his arms, sapping his little strength. His throat was closing again, trying to stem the pillar of flame that roared through his body, that was beginning to sound through his ears, drown out the Weasleys.

Mrs. Weasley frowned. She didn't lower her arms. "Draco, we- we're not like that. We won't hurt you. It's- it's going to be all right now."

"It's not. It's not all right. How can it be all right when the Dark Lord-"

"_You'll_ be all right," she amended.

"I won't. He'll find me. I can't stay hidden forever. And when he does-"

"Oh Draco." She leaned forward and closed her arms around him. Draco could feel himself shaking in her embrace, feared she must feel it too. She held him so that he couldn't twist away. Her hands came up, one against his back, and the other cradling the back of his head, bending his neck gently so that his forehead was braced against her shoulder. His face was pressed against her ample bosom, cushioning as a pillow- and his head seemed to fit. He couldn't see. She hid him. If his mother had ever held him this tightly, ever pulled him against her chest, he had been very little.

"I don't have all the answers," Mrs. Weasley murmured into his ear; her mouth seemed to be right beside it; though her breath was light, she made herself heard over the roar of fire. "I can't- I can't solve all the problems. But Draco, we'll keep you safe. We will. We'll not let him find you, not here. We won't let either of them find you. And we'll keep you safe while you're here. No more curses. No more threats. Can you believe that?"

Draco wished he could. He bit his lip, fishing for an honest answer. "Maybe. From you. But Potter- Potter won't like-"

"Molly."

Mrs. Weasley pulled back. Her husband had come over and dropped his hand on her shoulder. Mrs. Weasley pulled her rough hand across her eyes, and Mr. Weasley sank down beside her on the bed, put his arm around her. Draco was surprised the old bed could hold them all.

Mr. Weasley looked at him. His stare, magnified by the spectacles, was still sharp as icicles, even if it didn't seem as cold now.

Draco quickly dropped his own gaze to realize that he had gone limp in Mrs. Weasley's embrace. Now his legs lay out in front of him. His arms hung by his sides. He had shaken apart his own defenses- or she had crushed the stones to gravel and dust- or they had broken them together, and he had been left weak and too tired to fight, too tired to defend. The fire roared in his ears. His throat was tightening around the poisonous fumes of it. He felt wrung dry.

"What do you want us to do, Draco?" Mr. Weasley asked. It seemed to come from far away.

"What?" Draco had to pull himself back, back to the bed, out of his own mind. His voice was only a whisper, hardly louder than the ocean in a conch. "What do you mean?"

"Your father," Mr. Weasley said slowly, "doesn't have to get away with what he did to you."

Tension tried to snake back through his arms. His nails scraped along the skin of his palms. His voice returned, but scraped his throat, "No!"

"Arthur," Mrs. Weasley murmured, "is this really the time?"

"Please, Mr. Weasley, don't say anything. I- it's not just for my sake. I mean, I guess, maybe, but he- he's still my father and I-" Draco bit his lip. He remembered again the Dark Lord forcing back his head, looking into the red eyes, and seeing his father's face twisted in agony and guilt. He remembered the whisper: _"You could punish them, Draco, make them pay for what they've done to you. You could have your father- Potter on their knees begging you for mercy. Would that not please you?"_ And he remembered the flood of fire in his veins as power pulsed through him- power that panted to be used, that might destroy him if he contained it. "It's not what I want."

"Then what do you want?" Mr. Weasley wanted to know.

Draco grimaced, kept his eyes down. "Right now I want... I just want the pain to go away. I want to be able to sleep tonight..."

"I can get you something," Mrs. Weasley said quickly.

"To sleep?"

Mrs. Weasley nodded. "I think I have a bottle- a potion- downstairs in the storeroom. I almost certainly have one for pain. I like to keep a few remedies around- just in case. With seven kids- nine, I guess, counting you and Harry- I'll go find you something." She got up swiftly, pulling her hand across her eyes again. Draco watched her go, and continued to watch the door as he felt Mr. Weasley's gaze return to him.

"Why?" Mr. Weasley asked him.

"Why what?"

"Why not give him up?"

"Because-" Draco hesitated. "Because revenge won't help. And if he can't find me here, then I'm better off- then _you're_ better off. And if I just- If he thinks I- He wouldn't come alone. And you wouldn't like the company."

"He's evil, Draco. He's working with You-Know-Who."

"And he's already in Azkaban," Draco reminded Mr. Weasley quietly. "What more do you want of him?"

Mr. Weasley frowned. "Maybe a little honesty. He's deceived the world. I get the feeling he's still deceiving you."

"I know what he is," Draco contended, but he still felt an odd twist in his stomach that he didn't think had to do with the Dark Lord's curse.

"Do you think You-Know-Who will leave him there?"

"No," Draco admitted, "but nothing I say will keep him in there any longer, if he is going to be broken out."

"It's a little older than I'd like," Mrs. Weasley said as she returned with a glass of deep purple potion. "It might not be as strong as it could have been, but it should put you off to bed a little easier. It's been so long since the kids have had nightmares- and let me know about them." She handed Draco the cup and sat herself back down on the bed between him and her husband, looking anxiously at him. Mr. Weasley looked away.

Draco looked at Mrs. Weasley over the rim before taking a great gulp of the potion. It felt warm, like... chamomile tea. Dobby had used to bring him chamomile sometimes, when he couldn't sleep. He took another swallow.

"Are you going to be all right?" Mrs. Weasley wondered as she watched him finish off the potion. "Do you want us to stay with you till you're asleep?"

Draco hesitated and shook his head slowly. "This potion will have to be pretty good," he sighed, "to get me to sleep. And you should... sleep too."

Mrs. Weasley smiled. She took the empty glass from him and set it on his bedside table. "Lie down now," she said. "Under the covers."

Draco obeyed, wiggling himself under the sheets.

She leaned over to smooth the quilt. "If you need us, we'll be right downstairs. Don't hesitate. All right?"

Draco nodded.

"Sleep well, Draco." Mrs. Weasley turned away and Mr. Weasley left the bed to join her.

They were already by the door when Draco called out in a sleepy hum, "Mrs. Weasley? Mr. Weasley?"

"What is it, Draco?" Mrs. Weasley asked, her voice quiet now, kind.

"Don't- don't tell anyone- I mean Potter, the others- your children about this- about any of this. Please? They might not... understand..."

"No," Mrs. Weasley agreed. "You should tell them yourself when you're ready."

Draco shut his eyes. "Thank you," he breathed. He opened them again, finding sleep waiting for him just behind his lids and wanting to say just a little more. "Thank you," he said over the quilt, "for everything. Not just- not just tonight- or tomorrow."

"Don't mention it, dear."

Mr. Weasley had the final word and he sounded kind enough. "Good night," he said as he closed the door behind himself and his wife.

The darkness was not cold anymore. It was not as oppressive. Nor was it as complete. Draco glanced over at the window beside the bed and saw the moon's smile just creeping into the topmost panes.

_A/N: Before I let you all go from this chapter, it seems that I ought to apologize for the possible quality of this chapter. I wrote the majority of it while recovering from wisdom-teeth extraction and on pretty powerful pain medicine. I'm hoping that hasn't altered the quality of the chapter. If it has, I'm sorry, and I'll fix it later when I'm in a more sound state of mind, but I've been working- and I do mean working (this whole chapter has felt like a therapy session and a writing exercise in one)- on this chapter a while now and it seems time to post it. Please leave your evaluations of this chapter as reviews. I'd be very interested to hear from sounder minds. Cheers!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	4. A Change in the Winds

The next morning, Draco, fully dressed, padded down the stairs quietly, cautiously and was welcomed by the smells of sausages, bacon, pancakes, and toast, and the murmurs of conversation, the clank of dishes. Others were already up. By the delicious aromas, Mrs. Weasley had been up a long while.

He had awoken later than usual, in a room already bright with sunshine, feeling battered, his head aching, but better than he usually felt after nights when the Dark Mark burned. He had awoken feeling, for perhaps the first time, that he was really safe in the Burrow, that he might make it back to Hogwarts whole and sane. Mrs. Weasley's smile as he crept into the room, as she looked away from a pot of porridge on the hob eased but didn't erase his fears that he might be giving the Weasleys too much credit, that they could easily let go of all that he had told them, that they had lied, that they would turn it against him.

"Draco."

"Good morning, Mrs. Weasley," he returned. With his head down, standing by the doorway, he looked through his fringe around the table. The whole clan, and Potter too, were there and had been served. Mr. Weasley peered back at him over his _Prophet_ and Draco thought that just maybe he was smiling behind the paper; his eyes weren't narrowed in dislike anyway. Draco felt his own smile pushing at his lips.

"Sit down, dear," Mrs. Weasley prompted. "I'll fetch you some breakfast."

Draco slid into the last seat beside the twins and accepted, with the merest smile at his hostess, the plate that she passed him, heaped with a sausage, two slices of bacon, a helping of porridge, and a pancake. He caught the twins looking at him. Their expressions too, he thought, seemed softer—but maybe Draco was looking at them through a different filter. They looked away quickly.

Potter, though, caught his glance. His eyes were dark and narrow. _"Dear?"_ he mouthed, while Mrs. Weasley was pouring Draco a cup of dark tea.

Draco shrugged, but he felt misgiving tighten his stomach again. Potter already thought him a spy. Potter had accused him before of bewitching people to get information. Of course, if Mrs. Weasley intended to treat him more kindly now, after last night, Potter would notice, Potter would presume. And Draco didn't intend to ease his mind with the details, doubted he would have the same reaction as the eldest Weasleys.

"Did you sleep all right?" Mrs. Weasley asked Draco, sitting down with her own mug.

"Yes, Mrs. Weasley, thank you," Draco said. He kept his head down now, nervous to seem more than formally polite, to seem too happy, too relaxed.

"There seems to have been an epidemic of poor sleep last night," Mrs. Weasley continued conversationally. "Arthur and I had some trouble falling asleep. And Percy didn't sleep well either, did you, dear?"

Draco glanced up to see Percy shake his head. His eyes, behind the horn-rims, were indeed set in darker shadows.

Ron was watching Mr. Weasley as he turned a page. "Anything in the paper, Dad?"

"Nothing yet," Mr. Weasley said. "Well, not about anyone you kids are likely to know, anyway."

"Giant still at large?"

"Still," Mr. Weasley agreed. "And it's been more than two weeks. I almost think they're wasting their time. It must have left the country by now. The Junior Minister for the Muggles was released from St. Mungo's though. There's a very small note." He frowned.

"He was acting like a duck," Potter remembered. "They think that was witchcraft?"

"Badly done Imperius Curse. He tried to kill the Healers. He'll still be off the job for a bit. A nice, quiet holiday with his family. So long as he doesn't flair up again..."

Draco kept his head down and his voice quiet. "No news from Azkaban?"

There was a slight pause, but Draco resisted the temptation to look up at Mr. Weasley. He didn't want to know what expression he wore.

"No."

"Good."

"Good riddance," Potter growled.

Draco kept his head down and fought the immediate rise of anger, but George's next comment made it clear that the newly charged atmosphere did not escape the notice of the others.

"Getting a bit stuffy in here," he said.

"Which reminds me," Fred said, almost as if on cue. "George and I have a proposal."

"Quidditch," George announced, perking up and looking around the table.

"It's been a while since we've been up to the paddock," Fred continued.

"And whether or not we've left, we'd still like to keep up Gryffindor's chances," George grinned.

"We can't have their Seeker and Chaser out of shape for the new season."

"What d'you say?" George asked. "Bit of fresh air? Bit of sunshine?"

"Sunshine?" Ron scoffed, looking up to where already—or still—the fog pawed at the window.

Fred shrugged. "We'll fly above it."

A slow grin dimpled Ron's face. "All right."

"Yeah," Potter agreed, a grin pushing at his scowl and the dark cloud in the room too. "All right."

"Gin?"

"I'll make the teams uneven."

"Not if Malfoy plays," Fred said.

Draco started. "What?"

"What?" Potter echoed. "No."

"No way," Ron added.

"He can't play. He's a Slytherin," Potter rationalized. "We can't show him Gryffindor tactics."

"Why do you want me anyway?" Draco asked the twins.

"Gin's right. The team's'd be uneven."

"We rarely get the chance to play—all of us," George wheedled. "Perce won't play."

"I have work," Percy mumbled.

"And Bill and Charlie are gone off now," George continued. "So someone's always got to sit out if it's just the five of us."

"We need you to play," Fred told Draco.

"No, we don't," Potter said. "The teams won't be uneven. Not if someone refs for us."

"Like any one of us is going to volunteer to ref when we could be flying." Fred rolled his eyes.

"Especially, as Ron points out, in this weather."

"Unless you're offering, Harry?" Fred suggested.

Potter bit his lip. He looked younger when he did, Draco noticed. He usually only saw Potter look uncertain when he and Granger were fighting and she wouldn't help him in Potions.

"Besides," George turned and his blue eyes met Draco's, "are you even planning on trying out for the House team, Draco?"

Draco registered the use of his first name, blinked. "I— No. No, I don't think they'd want me and—and I don't really want—"

"So he won't pass on our tactics."

"But that doesn't mean I want to play," Draco hurried. "I don't want to—"

Potter ignored him. "He could still _talk_ to the team if he isn't on it," he grumbled.

"I think it's an excellent idea," Mrs. Weasley said, tipping a extra slice of toast on Fred's plate and kissing George's red hair.

"But Mum," Ginny complained.

"But nothing, Ginevra."

Ginny's eyes narrowed.

"Really, Mrs. Weasley. Don't. It's all right. I mean," Draco looked quickly toward the twins, "thanks for the offer, but I'd rather—"

"Nonsense," Mrs. Weasley said, "you should play."

"But I don't want—"

Potter, Ron, and Ginny were all glowering. The twins looked light, grins dimpling their freckled cheeks. Percy's eyes were narrowed as he looked around the table.

Mr. Weasley took off his glasses, wiped them on his robe, and as he did so, asked, "Why not, Draco?"

Draco started. "Why not?" he repeated. "Well, I—I don't want to be any trouble," he said, shrinking as his voice did, darting glances at the twins beside him.

"You're not," Fred exclaimed. "We told you, you'll even the teams. We can play three-a-side."

"But—" Draco's eyes slid across the table, to the scowls of Potter and the two youngest Weasleys. He lingered on Potter. How could he explain his apprehension to play without sounding a coward? He didn't want trouble, was what he meant. Trouble, fights, an excuse, an opportunity for Potter to knock him off his broom as he had threatened to do so long ago when they'd first flown against each other. And it wasn't just Potter...

"_Well now I'm scared," _Draco had drawled.

"_You ought to be."_

"_Why's that?"_

"_Strength in numbers,"_ Ron had reminded him.

This game could easily turn to five-on-one and Draco wasn't sure, especially after the night he had had, that he could do anything to defend himself against such odds. And he wouldn't be able to outrun Potter, not on a broomstick. Potter was nearly impossible to defeat in the air. Only Cedric Diggory had ever captured the Snitch before Potter—and Diggory had only triumphed because Potter had been overwhelmed by the dementors, fallen into a faint, and then fallen from his broomstick. If Potter decided to give chase, Draco could count on no such help. Dumbledore had warded the Burrow against attack. No dementor would be able to get inside his shield.

"So is it settled then?" George asked, looking around the table.

"I—" Draco tried.

"No," Potter snarled.

But Fred seemed to ignore them both. "Good," he said. "After breakfast? Or should we wait till later?"

Ron looked at his parents, then down. "After lunch," he proposed.

"Brilliant."

"Draco, do you need a broom?" Fred wondered.

"What? I— No," he sighed. "I have my Nimbus."

"Brilliant," Fred said this time.

"Mum, may Fred and I leave?" George asked.

Mrs. Weasley started. "I— yes. Of course, dears. I—"

Fred got up and gathered his plate and George's. He carried them over to the sink. "Breakfast was wonderful, Mum."

"Well, thank you." Mrs. Weasley beamed.

Fred, smiling in return, turned on the water and picked up a sponge, but Mrs. Weasley called out to stop him. "Just leave it in the sink, Fred dear. I'll set a spell to them later."

"Thanks, Mum," George called as they left.

"Well I never," Mrs. Weasley turned to her husband, still grinning broadly. "What has gotten into those two today?" she wondered.

"Nothing good," Potter mumbled, directing a fierce glare at Draco, who shrank beneath it. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley didn't seem to hear.

xxxx

Hurried footsteps followed Draco up the stairs, but before could turn around, a hand clamped down on his shoulder, and he was spun about, flailing a moment for balance on the narrow step, and forced to look into Potter's dark eyes.

"What did you do?" Potter demanded.

"Nothing," Draco spat back.

"Nothing?" Potter snarled. "_Nothing?_ Fred and George practically _begged _you to join us. Yesterday they hated you as much as the rest of us. And Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were helping them. _Mrs. Weasley called you 'dear'!_"

Draco's eyes shifted sideways. "I have no idea what's gotten into them." Potter didn't need to know he was only talking about the twins. There was no way he could know.

"_Liar!_"

Draco looked back up. "I'm not lying."

"I warned you, Malfoy. I warned you that if you hurt the Weasleys I'd—"

"What, Potter?" Draco snapped. "What can I do to prove that I've done nothing to them?"

Potter snorted. "Snap your wand in half, maybe."

"I— No! Are you crazy? I'd be completely helpless!"

"Better for us," Ron muttered. He, of course, had followed Potter; he always did.

"You're right," Potter said, his narrowed eyes fixed on Draco. "Even that wouldn't do it. I don't know enough about Dark magic to know if breaking your wand would break your spells. You'd still be here, wouldn't you? Maybe that's enough of an anchor for a spell. Maybe I have to break you if I—"

"Stop talking nonsense, Potter. What are you going to do? Murder me in the Weasleys' home?"

"Maybe they wouldn't mind after they come out of their trances."

"Look, Potter, someone under the Imperius shows certain signs usually. Larger than normal pupils, a vague aspect. If it's put on properly. Otherwise, there's a sort of... desperation in the eyes, a sharpness to them because the person is still there, still conscious, probably trying to get out and—and," he was remembering his most recent encounter with the Curse, when Callous Boor had put him under, "they're probably half scared to death," he finished quietly. "If you saw it, you'd know what I mean. And most people can be roused. Look at the Weasleys. Look at their eyes. Try shaking them awake before you accuse—"

"I've seen people under the Imperius before, Malfoy. I've seen a lot of people under it. And you can't tell."

"If you weren't half blind, maybe you could."

Potter rolled his eyes. "Are you really making fun of my glasses, Malfoy?"

"No, Potter. I'm talking about you. You and your— You— You're so sure you're right, you don't notice any contrary evidence even when it's dangling right in front of your face and—"

"And this is where you try and tell me you're not a Death Eater, isn't it?" Potter drawled. He exchanged an amused glance with Ron. "Where you tell me Snape doesn't hate me?"

"You—"

"And there's proof too that you've O'Toule under the Imperius. You sound just like her."

"I wouldn't do anything to hurt her Potter, surely even you've noticed—"

"The Imperius doesn't hurt. Actually, it makes you unaware of pain. So you wouldn't be hurting—"

"It's an Unforgivable. I wouldn't do that to her. Just because she's more sense than you, Potter, and can see—"

"Ron?" Draco looked over Potter's head, past Weasley's as the other two turned. Mrs. Weasley had appeared on the landing below, a basket of clothes under her arm. "Harry? Draco? What's going on?"

"Nothing," Potter said hurriedly. "Really, Mrs. Weasley, we were just talking."

Mrs. Weasley looked from one to the other, her eyes narrowing. "You'd just better make sure it stays nothing. Now, where were you all off to?"

xxxx

As Draco slunk across the garden with his Nimbus 2001 on his shoulder, he tried to hang back from the others. To his dismay, one or the other twin was ever looking back over his shoulder and slowing his steps. Draco, the tatters of the fog dangling from his sleeves and nipping at his ankles, began to wonder if the twins kept pace to keep him from running as he felt like doing. And then his thoughts turned darker.

Why _were_ the twins trying to include him?

Quidditch, he realized now that he was outside of the Burrow, away from the protection Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had promised him, was hardly the safest of activities. Did the twins hope he would be hurt? Was their seeming change really just more ill-wishing? Was it a ploy? Did the twins intend to injure Draco themselves and convince their parents it had been an accident? They clambered over the wall beyond which Draco was not ordinarily allowed to go because not far beyond the wall he was out of sight of the back door. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley would never know what happened up in this paddock and it would be his word against that of their own children and the beloved Potter if...

The sunshine as they climbed the hill, rare and warm though it was, did not brighten Draco's thoughts. He kept a wary eye on his companions and a stiff neck to prevent himself from looking backward, from appearing nervous.

"You all right?"

Draco started and turned to find one of the twins—he didn't know which—beside him, looking concerned.

"You're pale," the twin continued.

"He always looks pale." Ron did not look back and kept pace beside Harry.

"Oh, brilliant insult, Weasley," Draco growled. "I'm fine," he added to the twin.

"He's just about to get his butt kicked at Quidditch again." Potter did look over his shoulder, his lip curled back in a sneer.

The twin beside Draco smiled. "You think you could win those Quidditch matches without us, Potter?"

"Without Beaters? Maybe not," Potter allowed. "But we're not using Bludgers."

"No Snitch either, Seeker," the second twin called. "We're on even footing here."

"I have Ginny. Ginny actually does play Chaser. You will play with me, Ginny?"

"Of course," Ginny smiled. For some reason, still smiling, she looked back at Draco, which did nothing to settle his nerves.

"And Ron's usually Keeper," Potter added, grinning triumphantly.

"Still," said the twin who was farther ahead, "I think this should be fun. It'll be the most evenly matched game we've played in a long time."

"Meaning what?" Ron asked.

"Meaning a Nimbus 2001 has a chance against a Firebolt."

"My new Cleansweep—"

"Is still not a Firebolt or Nimbus, little bro."

They climbed over the style and when they were gathered in the center of the paddock, Fred began to lay out the rules.

"Right, so Ron's Keeper, which means, Harry, Ginny, you'll Chase. Draco? What do you want? Keeper or Chaser?"

Draco looked around the group. He was tempted to argue again that he would much rather stay safely on the ground, thank you very much, but muttered a defeated, "Chaser," to his own two feet because, after a moment's thought, he realized that he really didn't want to be in the position to have Potter and Ginny chucking balls at him.

"Right," Fred said. "Keep, George?"

"Sounds good," George replied, hefting his broomstick with a bright grin.

"Then I Chase. That end—" Fred pointed "—will be our baskets." Draco looked again and noticed the three baskets perched in the treetops on either end of the field. It was like revival Quidditch. "And that end'll be yours. Goal is to get an apple into the basket. Simple enough?" Fred asked Draco.

Draco shrugged. "Yeah. I can do that."

"Good. Then mount up."

It had been ages since Draco had been on his broomstick, since he had felt the wind rushing past his ears as he shot into the sky, blocking if only momentarily, his own inner monologue, the shouts of his father, of anyone else. For a moment, it was just him, and he couldn't hear himself either.

Then he flattened the broomstick to hover and looked across at Potter and Ginny, both hard faced, their eyes narrowed and mouths thin. Ron was far behind them, hovering by the trees.

"Ready?" Fred called. He had an apple in his hand. He must have veered aside to the trees when they'd flown up.

Ginny nodded.

"Ready," Potter said.

"Then—" Fred tossed the apple high into the air. Draco followed it with his eyes. "Go!"

Potter shot forward on his Firebolt and was beneath the apple before any of them. He caught it and took off between Fred and Draco. Draco gave chase and was not long afterward even with the tail of Potter's broom. But catching Potter was just as impossible when they were Chasing as when they were Seeking, and he could do no more than inch up to Potter's feet as Fred shouted, "Get him, Draco!" and as Draco glanced up to see George darting back and forth along the treeline. Potter zoomed up, and George tried to keep beneath him. Draco darted forward and got between Potter and George. Potter swore and then dived. Draco turned ahead of him and kept to his neck, but Potter reached out as he neared a basket and just dropped the apple into it. There was no room for George to come between him and it. Potter pulled steeply out of the dive and Draco leveled as he neared the ground.

"I forget," George said, "that he still Chases like a Seeker."

"Well of course he does," Fred said, flying up. "What did we train him for? Well done, Harry. Ten points to your team."

"Still second rate, Malfoy."

Draco didn't respond.

"Catch, Harry." George tossed him another apple, which Potter caught, and he and Ginny turned wordlessly around.

"Come on, Draco," Fred called, also flying back to the center of the field. "We'll get them yet."

Draco hovered beside Fred facing Ginny and Potter. He watched Potter's eyes as he looked at Fred and Draco then Ginny. He anticipated Potter's toss and caught the apple out of the air before Potter could. Fred gave a cheer that Draco barely heard as he whipped past Ginny and Potter. He heard Potter's roar, and he felt the Firebolt pushing up beside him from behind. He didn't look back at Potter, sure the expression on Potter's face of sheer, blind determination mixed with hatred would defeat him as it had in so many Quidditch matches before.

Unlike Seekers, however, Chasers could grab the Quaffle out of another Chaser's hands. Draco was holding the apple in one hand, near the end of his broom as he leaned over the handle, urging it on toward Ron, who was stationary before the trees. Potter's hand shot out and grabbed it too. Their eyes met. They fought over it. Potter pulled and Draco pulled back as their brooms hurtled on. Potter tugged harder, and Draco dug his fingers into the apple's flesh to keep hold of it. He yanked it back, but Potter flicked his wrist as he pulled and Draco lost his grip on the fruit. It went sailing into Potter's hand, and Draco was flung sideways. His broomstick bucked and reared and Draco made a quick grab for the handle. His knuckles whitened as he righted the broom and watched Potter execute a perfect about-face and speed past him in the other direction.

"Bad luck, Draco!" Fred shouted as he sped off after Potter, but his Cleansweep really didn't stand a chance.

Though George dived toward the apple, Potter scored again.

Ginny came up to Potter as George went to retrieve another fruit. She and Potter talked quietly. Draco couldn't hear what they said.

They were all soon again at the center of the pitch. Potter looked back at Ginny, then tossed the apple. She caught it. Draco took after her, but Potter was beside him before he even caught Ginny up. Potter kept close to him. Draco tried to elbow him out of the way, but Potter only elbowed him back and leant to the left, his broom handle on top of Draco's so that Draco's moved with his. They both slowed down, battling for control, Draco over his own broomstick and Potter to maintain power over both. Draco kept his eyes locked on Potter's. Potter sneered.

He shoved himself to the right, but Potter came right back on top of him, his shoulder colliding with Draco's.

"Lay off, Potter."

"No."

"What happened to Quidditch?"

"This is Quidditch."

Maybe it was for Potter, but not for him. If he couldn't throw Potter off him now, he'd never again get the upper hand on him off of the pitch either. Draco had to prove that he could master Potter, wouldn't cave beneath his unrepentant determination, be cowed by him like a whipped dog. A bishon frisé.

Draco shoved again, putting even more muscle into it. His shoulder struck Potter's chin, but Potter retaliated despite the cut in his lip.

The shove knocked Draco off-balance, loosed his hand from the broom. Potter smirked. Draco's eyes widened and he saw Potter come at him again. Draco tried to throw his hand back to the broom, right the balance. Potter struck again.

Draco's leg went over the broom's handle. He had hold of the broom with only one hand. He looked up to see Potter streaking off up the pitch, toward Ginny and Fred and George, toward the goals. He cursed and threw his second hand onto the handle. The broom banked to the left as he struggled to pull himself up and Draco's foot struck something. He looked down to see the leafy apple branches. A few fruits fell from the tree, kicked off by his flailing feet.

He maneuvered the broom further left, trying to find a branch sturdy enough to catch himself, from which he could spring back onto the broomstick, or pull it down to meet him. All the while, his mind complained, _That was dirty, Potter. Very dirty. But I'll get you. I will. I've got this and when I get back onto this broom…._

George was distracted by his sister and Potter, who were playing with him, passing the apple back and forth between them as they streaked up the field. Fred was flanking his sister, diving between them to try and intercept the fruit. They hadn't noticed what had happened yet.

He looked up the other end of the field. Ron was watching him, but he wasn't moving from the goal box. A spurt of flame shot through Draco. He tried to use it to pull himself back up onto the broom, but it was still banking.

His foot struck something more firm, he smiled, and then his foot didn't move. He dropped his gaze to it. It had caught in the crook of two branches.

The broom continued to slide off over the tree, however, dragging Draco's arms with it.

He held on as long as he could, trying to loosen his foot, to pull himself back onto the handle, but when his arms could stretch no further, he was forced to let go.

And he plummeted—all of him but his right foot, which remained caught. Branches and twigs scratched at his face and arms as he swung forward through them. Fruit and larger branches struck him on the head, arms, and in the stomach and for a moment the red apples and green leaves, and the ground, which was coming up fast, mixed with black and white Catherine wheels.

Then he jerked to a stop with a snap, a flash of white fire behind his slammed shut lids, and a shout. His ankle loosed from the crook and he fell the rest of the way to the ground, just managing to twist himself so that he fell flat on his stomach instead of his neck.

"Thirty to zero!"

Draco gasped in a breath and it rasped in his empty lungs. His stomach heaved, but he kept it down. The sky had gone a dark green. The sparks of sunlight dizzied him as they spun around his head.

"You're clobbering us." The voice sounded as if they were coming from distance through wireless static.

"So next time don't let Draco on your team." Potter. He knew that voice.

"We'll get you yet, won't we, Draco? Draco!"

Shouts, screams, roars. "What'd you do?"

There was a thud that seemed to make the earth shake, and continued to reverberate in Draco's head long afterward. Then a pale, freckled face—one of the twin's—was above him. "Draco? Draco, what happened?"

"He fell, all right, Fred?" Potter again. "It's not my problem, is it, if the lummox can't keep on his broom?"

"Ankle caught in a branch." It sounded thick even as Draco said it. His voice didn't sound like his own. He didn't remember giving himself permission to say it. "Snapped."

The twin groaned. "This was supposed to be a friendly game. No," he said, pushing against Draco's shoulders when he tried to prop himself up.

"No need to tell me twice." That small movement had blinded him with black and white fireworks again and the world had spun beneath him so violently that he feared once more that he'd be sick. He lay back again, his breathing shallow.

"This is not good. Draco, stay still. I'm just gonna look at it."

"Yeah, sure."

Some part of Draco snapped awake when George's fingers—was it George? brushed against his skin. They felt cold. He jolted upright to George's complaints, and, though the world did spin, it quickly righted itself. "No," he breathed, hardly knowing what he was refusing.

"It doesn't look good, Draco. Look, it's all bent the wrong way. I know a spell to mend bone, but I don't know if I'd want to try it without resetting your foot, and—"

"I'll be fine."

"You can't walk like this, Draco. You can't go anywhere. If you wait here, maybe Fred can keep you company, and I'll go get Mum."

Fred landed nearby. "How is he?" he asked, coming forward.

"Not good. He needs Mum."

"I don't need anyone," Draco complained.

"Yes, you do."

"Look, what do you two care if I'm hurt? When have you ever cared before? Just go away, and leave me alone." He tried to push himself to his feet, but the moment he put weight on his ankle, it collapsed beneath him with a wave of fire that brought a wave of nausea as he fell back into the grass.

"Stop it. You'll make it worse."

"Look, just help me up," Draco conceded. "Give me something to lean on. I can make it to the Burrow on my own, but don't—" He opened his eyes, fixed them on one twin's face and then the other's. "Just don't. I don't know what you're doing, what you think you're doing, but I don't need your pity or your help, and I don't want it."

Fred and George exchanged a glance. George held out his hand and his broom. "You can use this," he said.

"I can't fly like this. I could never push off."

"Not fly. Use it to lean on. Like a cane."

Draco flinched. Fred and George exchanged another look. After a moment, Draco reached out and accepted George's hand, then, when he had steadied himself against the twin, quickly snatched his broom. He tested his weight against it. The twisted bristles were rough against his face, but it held.

"Thanks," Draco muttered without meeting the gaze of either twin.

"You're welcome."

Draco turned away and began to limp down the hill, biting his lip against the heat that was in his ankle and threatened to redden his face too. When he passed out of the trees, he thought he heard the rumble of more shouts, but he couldn't be sure.

Mrs. Weasley ran from the Burrow when she saw him, and he leant against her when she forced her arm under his, wrapped hers around him. "Thanks," he mumbled, as she took the broom from him, ashamed to admit that George was right, that he was tired, that the trek had been difficult.

"What happened?"

Draco knew his face must be red as he confessed, "I snapped my ankle. Caught it in a tree branch."

She tutted but didn't comment on his weakness or stupidity or suggest that he ought to have tried harder because he might have died. She led him inside and sat him down at the kitchen table, putting a second chair beneath his broken foot. She knelt down beside it and sought his face. Draco wouldn't meet her gaze anymore than the twins'.

"Draco, this is going to hurt. Are you ready?"

Draco nodded.

She braced his foot against her hand, held his leg in her other and pushed.

A shout tried to tear through him, rocketing up from the ankle, but he bit his lip, and it escaped as a squeak, though his eyes stung dangerously.

"Draco?"

"I'm fine." He met her eyes to try and prove it.

She frowned, but did not contradict him. He pulled his sleeve across his eyes the moment she looked down, but feared she had seen the wetness he shoved from them.

She drew her wand and Draco flinched, but she merely lowered it to the swollen ankle and muttered, "_Episkey_." The ankle first burned hot, then froze cold, and Draco knew it was healed; Dobby had used a similar spell on him before.

He smiled. "Thanks, Mrs. Weasley. I'll just get out of your way and—" Draco tried to stand, but like George had, she shoved him back into the chair.

"Oh no you don't. That ankle needs rest, and I could use the company. I can work around you easily."

"But—"

"Really, Draco." She smiled, and Draco forced a smile in return, unsure whether or not he was glad to be compelled to stay. He watched her preparing dinner until Fred and George trooped into the kitchen.

"Hey, Draco," Fred said, clapping him once on the shoulder.

Draco looked up at him, confused.

"We caught your broom," George told him. "We put it in the shed with the others."

More quietly, while George greeted their mother, Fred asked, "What've you told her?"

"Just that I snapped my ankle."

Fred looked back at his mother. "You want us to keep it secret, then? I'm sure none of the others will explain."

"You hardly know what happened either."

"Harry pushed you off, didn't he?"

Draco frowned. "I don't reckon he told you that."

Fred grinned. "We're intelligent boys, Draco; we twigged it ourselves. So what story do we keep around Mum?"

When Draco said nothing, Fred added, "George and I were talking. We reckon Harry did it on purpose."

"You think?" Draco growled. Of course he had.

"And we don't think he ought to get away with it."

"This is between Potter and me, Weasley. Don't get involved."

"But if Mum knew—"

"Potter'd blame me, think I snitched, and hate me all the more."

"But if we made sure he knew that we were the ones who told her…."

"He thinks I've already got you all under the Imperius."

Fred frowned. "Well, you don't."

"Thanks. I knew that."

"Can we tell him that?"

"It won't do any good." Draco sighed, "Tell him what you like, Fred. I suppose it can't really hurt me anymore. But if you talk to your mother," Draco added, "be sure Potter knows it wasn't me who snitched."

Fred smiled at him. "That I can do. George?" he said, turning. "You coming upstairs?"

"Coming."

xxxx

Dinner that night was a very awkward affair. Draco sat silently, his head down over his plate. Fred and George, who had chosen to sit between him and their mother tonight, kept darting glances between him, Potter, and their parents. Potter, Ron, and Ginny, all grouped on the other side of the table, seemed to have noticed the twins' glances too and frowned. Draco tried to keep a smile from his lips. For once, he wasn't the direct cause of the tension at the table and it was something of a relief. He didn't carry the brunt of the glares tonight.

After pudding, Ron and Ginny tried to lure the twins away to a game of Exploding Snap, but they declined, and Potter frowned more deeply as the three of them slunk away. Draco hurried after them, as did Percy, who used his usual excuse of work brought home from the office.

Draco listened from his room, keeping quiet so he could hear the footsteps on the stairs.

His vigil was rewarded by a shout that echoed down the stairs, so loud that it startled him anyway, made him jump. "IT WOULD SO HAVE BEEN A LOSS, HARRY POTTER! NO, DON'T ARGUE! I DON'T CARE IF YOU DON'T LIKE HIM, I WILL _NOT_ HAVE YOU— PUSHING PEOPLE FROM THEIR BROOMS? REALLY, HARRY, I JUST—I JUST—"

Draco had never heard Mrs. Weasley so furious before. He thought he ought to get a lift from Potter's punishment, but he only dreaded the morning, when he would be forced to face him again. He dreaded the retribution that was bound to come. He lay down on the bed, pillowing his head on his hands. He wondered what Potter would do.

"I REALLY WON'T HAVE IT, HARRY! DON'T—DON'T TEMPT ME TO— DON'T MAKE ME—" Her shouts quieted again.

Draco shut his eyes, but he doubted he'd get much sleep tonight. Regret knotted in his stomach. He should never have yielded power to the twins. He wouldn't do so again.


	5. Curiosity Killed

Draco lay awake in the dark while scenarios of Potter's revenge played across his mind. Shadows, tree branches with groping hands, long-nailed and long-fingers scratched across the yellow walls of his borrowed bedroom. The sun rolled across the Egyptian sky. Draco rolled over on his side, curled in upon himself. He wouldn't sleep, would he? He thought about getting up. He thought about writing Alana to tell her that he now had played Quidditch with the Weasleys. She'd be glad to hear it if he didn't tell her the conclusion of the game. But he didn't want to tell her. Not yet. He worried his pen would slip if he wrote her now and his thoughts would overtake his conscious and flow out in ink. She knew of course that Potter was here. She had to know how they felt about one another, but she didn't have to know how poorly things were going.

But he couldn't just lie here.

He sat up, pushed his legs off the bed, and crossed the floor on his bare feet. He would go downstairs, get a glass of water. It couldn't hurt and maybe he'd walk off some of his energy.

He opened the door, shut it quietly behind himself, and crept off down the stairs, unsure still of which steps would creak, cringing when he mistook a loud step for a safe one. That was one benefit of marble and stone over wood, another benefit of Malfoy Manor over the Burrow.

A light was filtering up from the kitchen, and Draco paused. He hadn't expected anyone else to be up….

"I thought we'd seen the worst of it raising six boys and a girl with only brothers."

"I know." That low moan was Mrs. Weasley's.

"If I could think Harry had a reason other than just—just sheer hatred—"

"Arthur!" Definitely Mrs. Weasley.

"I'm not saying I'd approve of it then, just that it'd make me feel a bit better about it."

"What are we going to do, Arthur? I don't—I can't send that poor boy back to his relatives. I can't! But I don't want to send Draco away either. Poor boy needs someplace to rest, someplace safe—"

"With Harry here, maybe this isn't it."

There was a pause, and Draco leaned forward over the banister. They—they couldn't—they wouldn't send him away, would they? And away to where? Where would he go? It wasn't that Draco hadn't considered leaving himself, but—

"But we promised Dumbledore. Arthur, we promised Draco."

"There is that."

"I think we just have to hold out and hope that this clears itself up."

"It won't," Mr. Weasley predicted, sounding glum.

"But it breaks my heart to yell at that boy, watch him shrink."

"Maybe once'll be enough."

"Spying on Mum and Dad?"

Draco spun around, his heart pounding. His hand leapt for the pocket of his pajama bottoms. He drew his wand and aimed it at a small shadow standing in the dark stairwell behind him. A cloud of hair framed her head.

"Ginny," he breathed, lowering the wand. "I—"

"Seems like if they'd wanted you in on the conversation they'd have asked."

"I was coming for a drink of water," he said, his voice hardening, his muscles tightening. He jammed the wand back into his pocket before he did anything rash. His fingers seemed stiff and reluctant to release the handle. "What are you doing down here?"

"I," she said in a passable impression of Percy's pompous air, "was using the loo and heard the floorboards creak. I came to see who it was."

"Nosy," Draco spat. "You Gryffindors are always so nosy."

"Says the Slytherin caught eavesdropping. Shove it, Malfoy."

"You're a lot bolder in the dark."

"I'm angry," she snapped.

"I don't see why. You're always listening in on them too. You're all trying to figure out what they don't want you to know."

"That's not the same. That's— Did you hear that?"

"What?"

"Oh no!" Ginny breathed. "Come on," she said to Draco and sprang back up the stairs.

Draco didn't move from the step. "Why don't you just tell me to stay here and get caught?" he asked acidly.

Ginny stopped and turned. "Because I think Alana might kill me if I let them send you away from here and Mum is never pleased to find us eavesdropping. Because you saved Kari once. Because if you are caught, you might tell them I overheard some of it too. You might even manage to twist the story to make yourself the hero and me the guilty one. I know you've got a way of doing that."

Draco started slowly up the steps, just as a chair scarped across the wood floor of the ground storey. Ginny had already turned to lead the way.

"You don't trust me, do you?" Draco asked her, following her dark shadow.

"Of course I don't."

"But I saved Kari."

"Once. You think one good deed redeems you of a lifetime of evils?"

"And Alana loves me."

"Yes," Ginny said through her teeth. "And I've told her not to." Ginny stopped and stormed around. They were beside one of the windows onto the staircase now, fortunately or unfortunately—fortunately because he saw her stop and didn't run into her, unfortunately because if Mr. or Mrs. Weasley came up the stairs, he and Ginny would be easily spotted. In the moonlight, he could see the fire in Ginny's eyes, see the tension, like a cat preparing to spring, in her stance. "Why?" she demanded. "Why does she trust you? Why does she love you?"

Draco dropped his gaze. "I don't know why she loves me, but—but she might trust me because—because I trusted her. I told her so much, I answered so many of her questions, I don't think she has any reason to think I'd keep anything from her—and not tell I was."

"So what are you keeping from her?"

"Just one thing," Draco said, shaking his head, "and I've promised her that when I can talk about it, she'll be the first one I do tell about it. But," he added hurriedly, "Dumbledore knows about it—and he isn't as worried about it as I am, so I don't think—I have to think that that means I'm more worried about it than I should be," he finished with a small flush of shame.

Ginny was staring at him, but he didn't raise his gaze to meet hers. He was waiting for Ginny to find the fracture in his armor. She would only need one good swing, he thought, to break it as Alana had, and leave him mired in shattered glass. And could he be sure this time that some shard wouldn't impale him? Alana had been gentle and careful not to hurt him anymore than she had to. He didn't think he could count on Ginny to be as kind. He was tempted to muster his strength to bolster those walls, but as he stood there on the steps, beneath Ginny's critical stare, he felt exhausted.

"Come upstairs," she said.

"Where?"

"To my room."

Draco just nodded and followed Ginny up the steps, letting her tell him which steps to avoid because they squeaked. Draco vaguely realized that this was higher than he'd ever been in the house, vaguely realized that he was climbing up past Percy's bedroom, climbing closer to Ron's and Harry's. He vaguely realized he had crossed into enemy territory and that he didn't know if the girl he followed was friend or foe. But he didn't stop till Ginny opened her bedroom door.

"Go on," Ginny urged, and he stepped inside. If any of the Weasleys were to catch him in here… and Ron and Potter were just a floor above. He was pretty certain that the twins' new sympathy would evaporate if they thought he was dallying with their sister.

Ginny's was a small room. She had a similar view to his out of her lace curtains, overlooking the paddock where they had played Quidditch earlier that day. A desk stood beneath the window and by the moonlight he could make out the gleam of an inkwell and a smattering of slim, glossy magazines—no, comic books, he saw as he crossed the room. In one corner there was a bed and in the other a generous armoire, both of which Draco avoided looking at. Only a small gap separated the desk and bed. He picked up one of the comics and began to flip through its pages. They lit with flashes of light—red and green and white—as he did. Wizards dueled throughout. It seemed to be about a Medieval warlock.

"Put it down, Malfoy."

"So I'm not here to discuss your reading habits? Not the usual thing I'd expect a teenage girl to read." He tossed the comic on top of the others.

"We're here to discuss you. And if you don't want to, then get out and get caught."

"Think they're still looking?"

Ginny shrugged. "Maybe." She crossed to the bed and pointed Draco into the desk chair. "Well," she prompted.

"What?"

"Tell me what you told Alana."

"All of it?"

"What are you comfortable telling me?"

Draco thought about it. "I admit, it'd be nice to have another ally in the house."

"Another?"

"Your mum and dad and," he frowned, "well, you saw Fred and George today. Know anything about that? Because I don't."

Ginny shook her head. "Did you tell Mum and Dad the same story you told Alana?"

"Dumbledore told them some I think, but I don't know what. I told them a little more."

Ginny frowned. "Tell me what you told them."

"I don't want to. Ask for something else."

Ginny's arms crossed over her chest, and her eyes narrowed. The expression in her face was dangerously like her mother's. "I thought you wanted an ally."

"I do. But not if it's going to cost me all that much."

"Seems like you're not willing to bargain."

"I am. Are you?"

Ginny frowned. "All right. Tell me about," she waved a hand, "whatever happened to you last year, before Hogwarts."

Draco nodded. "Fair enough. Starting after the fiasco at the Triwizard Tournament, after he came back. I was sent out almost right away. The Dark Lord had gone after Karkaroff, but Karkaroff wasn't at Durmstrang. The Dark Lord took it over. He's using it now to train recruits, because Durmstrang already has the reputation, and no one is going to look too closely into the school—"

"Doesn't their Ministry?"

Draco shook his head. "You're right. That isn't fair. I don't know that. I'm guessing. I'm guessing because if anyone had looked into it, they'd have to wonder, especially after February. He brought his Death Eaters—the ones he freed from Azkaban—back to the school. They've been living there. Some taught a class or two."

"In torture and killing?"

"Basically."

"And you went through all these classes?"

"Through them, yes. But," Draco shifted in the chair. The flashbacks were starting. Flashes of green light firing through his brain, spiders skidding across desks, landing on their backs, unmarked, dead. The house-elf Vlad's pinched face screwed up against the pain as he shouted his darkest secrets for Draco and the Dark Lord to hear—just because Draco had needed to practice the Veritas Curse. "I—I didn't really like it, and I wasn't particularly good at it."

Ginny snorted.

Alana had really been a much more considerate listener, letting him talk, aware of the pain it caused him, letting him say only what he could, holding back her questions till much later—he was almost sure she still had some, that she would continue to pepper their conversations with them and then quickly change the topic to something more benign, maybe seal his lips with a kiss when he'd given her his answer. But Ginny's interruptions pricked him and adrenaline was beginning to fight off some of the pain of the confessions as he readied himself against her distrust. "What?" he demanded.

"You, who have always been most amused by the curses we learn, used them for fun, you didn't like learning worse things?"

"No I didn't. Did you think the Dark Arts were a walk in the park, Ginny? For anyone? They can't be."

"The Dark Lord?"

"Look what it's done to him."

Ginny actually laughed at this. "Afraid all that black magic is going to stain your eyes red too, Malfoy? Make all your hair fall out? Misshape your nose?"

"Afraid what it'd do to my soul more like."

She laughed more at this.

Draco glared. "You wanted truth, Weasley. Don't scoff when I give it to you."

"It just all sounds so funny coming out of _your_ mouth."

"Well, try to forget the lying little bastard you know. I'm introducing you to the real Draco Malfoy, if only for a few minutes."

Ginny did stop laughing at this. She stared. "You've been lying all these years?"

"You want to know why I'm in Slytherin? Because I asked that stupid hat to put me there, because I didn't want to know what my father would say or do if I was put anywhere else. Maybe I'd've been put there anyway—there's no way of knowing now—but—"

"Do you think you'd have been?"

Draco tried not to bite his lip. He looked out the window, away from Ginny. "I don't know. And I'm not sure it matters." He looked back at Ginny with a grin. "That friend of yours—I sometimes think she did things to me. Saving Kari, does that sound like something the old Draco Malfoy, the one you remember, would have done? Or, really," Draco frowned, "the Dark Lord probably…." Draco's gaze trailed back outside, to the black night leering down, to the wind pushing the trees so that their branches quaked, knowing what the wind could do if it chose. "Probably he did these things to me, scared me enough, showed me enough darkness that I—balked. Balked and then ran. Showed me enough that I could really appreciate the light."

"The good you mean? Dumbledore?" Ginny grinned, "Harry?"

"Shut up, Weasley. Potter is at least as black as I am."

Her grin snapped like a rubber band. "He isn't."

"He saves people. I admit that's hard to dislike, but how can I—how can I like a man who treats me like he does? I like what he does—the heroics. I hate him."

Ginny glared.

And then the fire shot through his arm, rocketed through his veins in a driven heartbeat or two. He clutched at the arm with a moan.

"Malfoy?"

"Nothing," he said, straightening, but the fire was still pouring through his body, boiling his blood, seeping into his muscles, and he knew he really didn't want to stay here with her because he wouldn't be able to hold himself together much longer. The ligaments would be incinerated, and he'd fall rigid to her floor, and— "Anything else you want to know, Weasley?"

"You're not well. It's your arm. It's— You're Marked."

Draco stared at her.

"The Dark Mark."

"How do you—"

"Harry, of course. It means you're supposed to go to him. Some kind of calling."

"But I'm not going."

"Good."

"Ginny, I've got to get downstairs. I— It gets worse—the pain—the longer I stay away."

Ginny nodded. "Do you need me to go with you? Or should I go get Mum?"

Draco shook his head, but he was uncertain, even as he did, that he should be refusing the help. "Go to sleep. I'll be fine in the morning. Achy, but—"

Ginny nodded again. "Goodnight, Malfoy. Erm, if you can have one."

Draco crept out of her room, shut the door behind himself. Everything ached and twinged and burned, but it was still bearable—barely. The stairwell was darker than Ginny's room had been. Draco allowed himself to stand, breathing deeply, for a few minutes, to let his eyes adjust to the darkness, he told himself, but also to try to counteract the poison in his veins, he knew.

In his own stillness, he noticed the sounds of the house, the creaking of old wood and clank of an old pipe—but, no—that wasn't what he was hearing. Footsteps and a—a scratching, like a dog's nails on a stone floor. A thud and a creak. Another thud. The Weasleys had a ghoul that liked to drop things, but he lived in the attic; these sounds came from below. Bangs were not unexpected from Fred and George's room, which was on the floor below, but this didn't sound like their pranks—and they knew better than to do any of that at night.

Draco started down the stairs, listening for more of the odd noises. He stopped outside one of the bedroom doors, counted the floors mentally. Percy's. Percy's?

There was a sharp curse from the other side of the door then feet shuffling. What was he doing in there? What was he up to in the middle of the night? Draco put his hand against the door. His right hand crept to the doorknob, and his left retracted to curl instead around his wand.

He turned the doorknob.

He opened the door.

Eyes stared back at him from a Death Eater's mask, a body swathed in a long, black robe, illuminated by a candle on the bedside table. Draco raised his arm. And then the Death Eater flew from the open trunk at the end of Percy's bed at Draco. The door shut behind him, and the Death Eater's hand pinned him against it. The force of the Death Eater's blow sent Draco's wand-arm flying back to catch himself. The Death Eater pressed his wand against Draco's throat. A quick, "_Expelliarmus_," sent Draco's wand skittering across the floor.

"Malfoy," the Death Eater growled.

The eyes that glared at him were a dark, stormy blue. Draco recognized his voice.

"P—Percy?"

The Death Eater's hands were bare still Draco noticed as the Death Eater stepped away, let Draco go, but kept him at wandpoint, the tip brushing the hollow of Draco's neck.

"What are you doing?" the Death Eater demanded. "Where did you think you'd get off sneaking into my room?"

"It—it is you. It really is."

"Answer the question, Malfoy." The wandtip flared suddenly hot, and Draco's let out a surprised yelp.

"Percy!"

Percy took his wand away, took a breath to cool it, then quickly had it on Draco again. The fire continued to rage through Draco, that burn only mimicking the punishment the Dark Lord sent by his Mark, the pain that lanced through Draco. He resisted reaching for his arm.

"I was—I was out to use the loo," he lied, borrowing the excuse from Ginny, "and I heard noises from your bedroom."

"You have good ears."

"Well, I felt the Mark burn." He winced against the fresh bolt of pain. "I was already on alert. I suppose that's why you're up?"

"Yes."

"Why, Percy? You? Of all people I'd have never guessed— You love rules."

"I do."

"Why?"

"I wanted power. He offered."

"Yes, but at a price. A steep price."

Percy shrugged. How could he be so relaxed? He had to be sharing Draco's pain. He was Marked too. He too was late to answer the Dark Lord's call.

"Your family— Your mum and dad—"

"Will all be better off for my loyalty." Percy clenched and unclenched his empty, left fist

Draco shook his head. "It doesn't work like that. He won't spare them because of you. He'll use you to get at them."

"Oh what do you know?" Percy snarled. "You left. I've heard the whole story now, Malfoy."

"I left because I saw what he was doing to me, what he was asking me to do, because I saw what he was really like."

"You left because you're a fool. You fled power to become a fugitive, living off my family's charity and Dumbledore's compassion."

"You have no idea—"

"I have every idea."

"They love you, Percy. Your family loves you. Why would you abandon that?"

"I told you. I'm doing this for them as much as myself."

"What has he asked of you?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Because I have to think that he can't have asked the worst of you yet. What will you do when he asks you to betray someone you love? What if he asks you for Ginny? What if he asks for your mum?"

"He won't, Malfoy."

"You're making a mistake."

"No." Percy thrust his wand up again against Draco's throat. "You are. You've been nothing but a bother to us, Malfoy. Tell me why I shouldn't march in there tonight and tell them all where to find you. And tell me quickly because I want to go."

"Because they won't just kill me—if they kill me. Your family's been harboring me. Do you think—"

"I think that's another reason to get rid of you. Maybe I could do it myself. Do it now before any more time passes, before he can begin to think that my family cares about you—or you care about them. Bring your body by Side-Along Apparition."

"Percy, you wouldn't." But Percy's wandtip was still holding Draco in place. Draco's wand was still several feet away on the floor. Percy could. He could, and Draco wouldn't even be able to defend himself.

"You know my secret now, Malfoy. You're even more of a danger to me now than you were."

"And what will you tell him? What will you tell him when he asks where you found me? If you bring me to him?"

Percy's eyes narrowed.

"He'll ask. You know he'll ask. And you can answer as you like. He'll figure it out. He might come after your family anyway. And he might punish you. He might punish you for not bringing me to him sooner."

"Fine," Percy spat, and he removed his wand with a sharp swipe.

Draco relaxed away from the door, put a hand to his throat. His eyes jumped to his wand. He wasn't sure if he dared yet move to retrieve it. Percy was still watching him closely.

"I'll make you a deal, Malfoy," he said quietly.

Another flash of fire racked his body. Momentarily, the world twisted. Draco sucked in a breath past his first desire to be sick. But he was still on his feet. He'd held on this long. But how much longer? "A deal?"

"Yes. A life for a life. That's fair, right?"

"Right," Draco said, still wanting, still hesitating to dive for his wand. "Yeah. I suppose."

"You know my secret. I know yours. Either one of us talks and the other is dead."

Draco nodded. He fought back a shiver, a moan as the fire welled again inside of him, as his muscles began to wither in the heat.

"So I won't tell the Death Eaters where to find you, and you won't tell anyone I've joined him. Anyone," Percy repeated, "no one in the family, no one outside of it. And if I even begin to suspect that you've broken the deal, well—"

"You'll kill me," Draco finished for him. "Or have me killed. Does the same apply to me?"

"Malfoy, you wouldn't know, would you, if I told them? Not till it was too late. That's just the difference in the people we could tattle to."

Draco still watched him carefully. "It's not a fair deal," Draco said carefully. "You're right of course that I'd be dead more quickly than you would be. Your parents—well, they wouldn't hurt you, would they? I'm not sure what they would do. So already you have more assurance than I do. Added to that, by keeping my secret, you save more than one life. You save at least eight, maybe even ten: your mum and dad, Fred and George, Ron, Ginny, Potter—"

"No one's saving Harry."

"Me," Draco continued, "and maybe even Bill and Charlie. I don't know how fierce his vengeance would be."

"You think awfully highly of yourself, Malfoy."

"I'm high on the hit-list. Maybe second. Maybe third."

Percy's eyes narrowed further. He stepped again toward Draco, and Draco found himself pressing his back against the shut door without his permission. "No. You think too highly of yourself. You've become—" Percy seemed to turn the next word around his mouth, tasting it "—noble. You're too stuck on payment and responsibility. You'd see dying to protect my family as a way to repay your debt, wouldn't you? It would trump everything else you've been taught, wouldn't it? That's why you really ran away. You're too soft. So, no, Malfoy. All I save by keeping your secret is your traitorous hide, because you'd step in front of the rest of them, wouldn't you, because you really want to die for them? And that's the same reason you're going to make this deal with me. You're only arguing as a way to put it off. You know and I know that you'll shake hands with me." Percy thrust his ungloved hand in front of him.

Draco stared at it. He stayed by the door. It would support him maybe for just a bit longer…. "I'm noble?" he repeated. It was a strange compliment. One he'd never have applied to himself. "You think I want to die for your family?"

"I do."

"So you're offering to keep me alive longer?"

"Yes. Till you're out of the house. You can die trying to save yourself instead of protecting them."

Draco's hands began to tremble. "But if I want to protect them… you're offering me the worse end."

"No, I'm offering to keep my family safe. For certain. Not to let you attempt to save them—and probably fail, because you're right, if he came here for you, he would kill you then kill you. So are you going to deny me and kill them?"

Draco looked at Percy's ungloved hand. He looked at Percy's masked face. He shook his head. He really didn't have a choice. Did he? Percy had confused him. Maybe this was how he had made it into the Minster's entourage….

_All angles. See the bargain from all angels._

The fire raged in Draco's mind, behind his open eyes. His legs were shaking beneath him. Why weren't Percy's? Percy surely couldn't fight the curse better than Draco could, could he?

Draco grasped Percy's hand.

Percy grinned. He laughed. "Your life is conditional now, Malfoy. And I hold the cards."

Percy pulled his hand from Draco's.

Draco couldn't stopper a groan. He leaned heavily against the door to keep from sliding into a heap on the floor. He braced himself with his palms against the wood behind him.

Percy pulled on his gloves and Disapparated.

He left Draco by the door, feeling as if he'd just made another deal with the devil. The fire surged inside of him, through his body, making him sweat and shake, eating him from the inside.

He'd never make it back to his own bedroom….

He pawed open the door.

xxxx

Draco groaned and twisted his legs and arms closer to his bent body. He was so cold…. He kept his eyes jammed shut against a blinding light. He tried to remember what he could of the night before. Ginny, the Mark, Percy, the fire, and—

"You're awake."

Percy.

"I shut the door for you. You were just lying there, moaning and groaning. It was disgusting. Not a sight for my little sister. What? You couldn't make it to your own bed?"

"Percy."

"Get up, Malfoy, and get out."

Draco opened his eyes. Percy was in his green, pinstriped pajama bottoms and a matching, buttoned shirt. He stood just a few feet away, his arms crossed over his chest, his foot tapping against the wood. Draco groaned again and pushed himself upright to escape the tapping that drummed in his head, sending Catherine wheels across his vision. His whole body ached even more fiercely than was usual after a Mark-burning night. Probably because he'd slept on the wooden floor.

"Go on," Percy urged.

"You could have just—just levitated me into bed last night, if it was going to bother you so much."

"Someone would have heard you, the way you were carrying on, and then what would I have said? Lucky no one heard you through the open door, really." Percy shook his head. "You really are just an idiot. Why on earth would you open the door to begin with?"

"But I must have kept you up, then?"

"I just put in a pair of earplugs and let you get on with it. Now, out."

Draco got onto his knees, and then, using the door as a support, to his feet. He shuffled into the hallway and down the stairs. Mrs. Weasley could come up and berate him about missing breakfast later. Now he was going to bed.


	6. Secrets, Secrets Are No Fun

_A/N: As some of you know if you've been reading all along and if you've been reading my author's notes, I have been editing these stories so that their plot lines reflect more accurately JKR's own. In doing this, I have included a few quotes in this chapter from chapter 6 of Half Blood Prince, "Draco's Detour" (page 105-106 US paperback). Let it be known that I lay no claim to these lines and they are property of JKR and Warner Bros. and anyone else I am supposed to mention._

_Yours forever, Tsona_

Draco lied and told Mrs. Weasley that he felt ill. She fretted over him and he regretted the invention almost at once as she laid a hand to his forehead, declared that he didn't feel like he had a fever, but did he think he did? because she would go and fetch him a remedy if he did. She would stay with him if he—

Draco told her that he just wanted to rest.

He lay on his side. He looked out over the yellow bedroom, at the desk with Alana's letters. Now he had something else to tell her. What would he tell her? He wanted to tell her about Percy, but he couldn't. Another secret he'd keep from her. He could tell her that he'd talked to Ginny, that he'd let Ginny question him. She'd like that. But what did Ginny think of him after the way he'd run out? She knew now that he was Marked.

That was more than Alana knew…. He'd have to ask Ginny to keep that secret and hope that she would. Or he'd have to tell Alana himself, get her alone before Ginny could. If she found out from Ginny and not him, she'd be cross.

But he didn't want to tell her. He didn't want her to know that he was that badly, physically scarred. That pain only grew, that scar only darkened over time, the wound dug deeper. She could not mend it anymore than he had been able to do. And she'd want to fix it. She'd exhaust herself, get herself in trouble for him once more trying to find a salve.

Yes, he'd have to talk to Ginny. But not now.

Now he wanted to sleep.

But sleep wasn't coming. His father's voice instead complained about Draco's weakness: his weakness in accepting Percy's bargain (Draco still wasn't sure it had been a good one), in collapsing in the doorway…. Intolerable weakness. The sort of weakness for which he would have been punished if he'd been in the Manor and not the Burrow.

And Percy—Percy was weak too, wasn't he, to have accepted the Dark Lord's offer? Shouldn't he have resisted, refused as Draco had done? He didn't nearly have Draco's excuse. Was he truly duped? Or was he right?

Draco tried to smother that thought. He had made his decision. He couldn't turn back now. Could he?

No. He couldn't. Alana—Alana would never let him. Nor would the Weasleys. They wouldn't understand.

But… but if he didn't go back… he'd be killed. They might be killed.

It didn't matter, really, if it was the right or wrong decision. It was the only decision. Draco couldn't hide forever. The Dark Lord would find him. If the Dark Lord didn't kill Draco, he'd lock him away and by wiles or torture or threat or all three get Draco's word, get him to take the test that he'd fled, and Draco would become his—wholly, fully his, with no chance for escape.

_No! _Draco twisted in the sheets, opened his eyes wide on the sunny window. _That's him talking. God, I thought I— No. I never escaped him…._

_I never escaped and Percy won't either._

If Percy was weak, he might not be able to withstand the pressure, the guile of the Dark Lord. Percy, being weak, might reveal Draco's secret under duress or by accident. The Dark Lord might pull the secret from his weak mind. So maybe it was better if Draco gave himself up? If he got himself away from the Weasleys, pulled the blame away from them, maybe earned them some credit with the Dark Lord by saying that they had somehow convinced Draco that he should return.

But no. No. He couldn't do that. Could he? Should he?

Draco rolled over to stare at the nearer wall, put the window to his back. Maybe that way he'd sleep….

But if Percy was weak, then why had he been less affected by the burning pain of the Mark's call?

Draco groaned, shut his eyes, and buried the shame of the Mark in the grip of his hand, beneath the sheet, beneath the quilt.

Above him the Egyptian sun slowly crept across a blue sky. The room around him grew slowly darker.

xxxx

"Ginny?"

Draco followed her after breakfast, as she headed back to her room. He caught up with her on the stairs. She turned and looked down on him, several steps below her between his floor and the eldest Weasleys'.

Draco glanced over his shoulder, waited a moment with shut eyes, listening for any noises of Ron and Harry coming up the stairs. They'd been helping themselves to thirds. Mrs. Weasley was upstairs gathering laundry and Ron had broached the topic of a Quidditch rematch, _sans_ Draco. It had seemed a good time for Draco to leave, while the two of them had chatted animatedly and had helpfully announced that they didn't want him there. He didn't think that they would twig that he was chasing the youngest of the Weasleys.

"Malfoy?" Ginny prompted.

"About last night…. About… when I left…."

"It's fine, Malfoy. I get it."

"No—I— I need a favor."

Ginny raised an eyebrow. "A favor?"

"Yes. Don't— Alana doesn't know." He looked down at the step, rocked back on his heels and forward again to his toes. "I don't want her to know," he mumbled.

"About the Mark?"

"Yes."

"Is that the thing you were keeping from her?"

"I—" Draco looked up at Ginny's hard stare. "No. Well, maybe—part of it."

"Part of it?"

"Gin, please, don't pry this out of me."

Her eyes narrowed. Her hair seemed to spark and snap to life, writhe and flash like flames. She snorted, "And don't call me 'Gin.' "

Draco nodded. "Right. Too informal."

Ginny nodded back. "So you lied last night." It was not a question. "You are keeping more than one thing from her, lying to her—"

"I—I didn't think about it. Not till—"

"_Didn't think about it_?" Ginny snarled. "Really, Malfoy—"

"Gin—Ginny—I've never been rid of it. I can't remember—"

Ginny threw her hands in the air. "I suppose you expect me to believe it was no big deal."

"No. Ginny, I really can't remember. I was too young when—"

"Don't lie again to me, Draco Malfoy!"

Draco looked down the stairs. He expected to hear running feet on the steps. Downstairs was quiet. Maybe too quiet. Without turning back to Ginny, still attuned to the lower levels of the house, he muttered his reply, needing Ginny to understand, needing Ginny's word, or needing to give up and tell Alana, let her worry herself. And he didn't want that. "He gave it to me before Potter defeated him. Ginny, I can't have been more than a year old when he Marked me."

Ginny said nothing. Draco waited. The whole of the Burrow seemed to have gone silent around him. He felt as if every picture on the wall was watching, listening, the walls leaning in.

He prompted, "You won't—won't tell Alana, will you?"

"Why shouldn't I? Will you?"

"No. She— It won't come off. I can't get rid of it. And she'd try and find a way. Because she wouldn't want me to have one, because she'd realize I don't want one. She'd think I just wasn't looking hard enough for a way to be rid of it, but—" Draco closed his eyes. "But the Dark Lord keeps his own."

"Well, that makes me feel a lot better about it. Thanks, Malfoy. You were doing pretty well till just then."

Draco met her fierce stare again. "I just meant—" It was something the Dark Lord had said to him. He didn't really know what it meant. Not really. Only knew he didn't like it and couldn't be rid of the warning anymore than the Mark. "I don't think the Dark Lord will have left any loopholes in this. It's— It punishes me for running. He won't have meant for that to be erasable."

"No," Ginny allowed, "I suppose he wouldn't." She sighed, "All right. I won't tell her. But I still think that you should. At some point. You won't be able to protect her forever—not unless you leave her."

"Thank you," Draco let his head fall with the weight of her judgment, "for keeping the secret." She was probably right. How long till he was alone with Alana, as he had been with Ginny, and the Mark burned?

Ginny waved him off and started up the stairs.

"Ginny?"

She turned again.

"Are we all right?"

Ginny blinked. "What d'you mean?"

"I— You— After the other night—"

Ginny frowned. She still hated him then. Her suspicion, her accusations ought to have let him know that already. Draco wasn't really surprised.

"Fine," he said, dropping his gaze to the wood. He felt more crushed by that frown than he would have expected. He didn't feel cross with her as he would have expected to feel. He started up the stairs past her on the way to his room. "I just wanted to know where we stood."

"Better."

Draco turned, looked down at her. Her face was turned up to his, pale and framed by curls of fire.

"What?" he asked.

"We're better," Ginny clarified. "I'm not dropping every complaint I've ever had against you. But— You did give me, well, at least _some_ of what I wanted."

Draco felt a crooked grin pushing at his lips and tried to fight it, bit back the sarcastic comments that leapt to his tongue, crude questions about what she really wanted from him. That would be bad—very bad—on so many levels.

Ginny shook her head and started up the stairs, passed him.

"Ginny."

She turned again.

"Thank you." He tried to smile, thought he might have succeeded.

Ginny returned a smile anyway, but she said, "You're still not cleared, Malfoy, and you haven't won all that many points. Those scales could tip again."

Draco nodded and Ginny climbed up the stairs away from him.

xxxx

Draco kept close watch on Percy as a week, almost two, crept by. The gloating glances that Percy shot Draco when no one else was watching faded after the first day that Draco returned to the family dining table. Draco didn't think that they meant that Percy had willingly betrayed him, particularly after they ceased. Percy was merely congratulating himself on having duped Draco, on having Draco on these tenterhooks.

Draco couldn't detect from Percy any new signs of strain that might have betrayed a new pressure from the Dark Lord, leaning in some direction with which Percy was uncomfortable, or that might have betrayed an accidental revelation of Draco's secret. Draco was certain that if Percy went back on his word to Draco, he wouldn't be able meet Draco's eyes, so Draco considered it a good thing when he and Percy shared a glance or glare across the kitchen table.

xxxx

Draco awoke the morning of 31 July to the most delicious aromas creeping into his bedroom from the crack beneath the door. He breathed deeply. It smelled like Christmastime, when his father kept the house-elves baking and cooking for several days in advance of the Christmas Eve party. But…

Draco crept down into the kitchen. Mrs. Weasley stood at the oven, just opening the door to peek in.

"What is it?" Draco asked her.

Mrs. Weasley straightened and smiled. "Cake. For Harry's birthday."

"It's Potter's birthday?"

"Yes, it is. Draco, try—try not to— The poor dear so rarely had a good birthday and—"

Draco dropped his eyes to the floor, remembering the threat that'd he overheard when the Weasleys had been alone the night of the ill-starred Quidditch match. "I'll keep out of his way," Draco promised. "It's the best gift I could give him, really."

Mrs. Weasley smiled sadly.

xxxx

Draco accordingly ensconced himself in his room for the remainder of the day, coming out only to grab a sandwich from the kitchen, till Mrs. Weasley sent Fred and George to fetch him for dinner.

They passed jokes over his head as they paraded him down the stairs. One of the twins, laughing, made to put an arm on his shoulder. Draco stopped and ducked out of his way. The twin looked back with a frown, but did not try again.

Draco sank down into his seat and didn't even notice the addition to their party till Mrs. Weasley called his name. "Draco, you remember Remus Lupin?"

Draco started and looked up. Professor Lupin was sitting in patched robes across the table from him, where Potter might usually have sat, except that today he had been placed at the foot of the table opposite Mr. Weasley, Ron and one of the twins on either side. The twins were shielding Potter and Draco from one another. Draco nodded to Professor Lupin with a muttered, "Professor."

Professor Lupin nodded back, frowning. Lupin had developed the mottled hair of a wolf since he'd left Hogwarts, flashes of white among the brown, reminding Draco of what he was.

Mrs. Weasley glanced at Draco then at Mr. Weasley.

The table was spread with a wealth of dishes.

Draco tried to fade, tried to Disillusion himself without a charm. He let the conversation flow around him, silent as a rock in a river's current.

"What've you been up to, Remus?"

Draco shrank back from the werewolf's glance. "This and that."

"Oh." Potter turned on Draco too with a glare.

He shrank farther back and fought a grumble about how he'd rather he wasn't here either.

"What've you all been up to?" Lupin asked.

"Quidditch mostly."

"Mum won't let us fight," Ron mentioned.

"Ron!"

"She's a wise woman then. You've still got another two years of school, I think."

"But, Remus—"

"Harry, I might not be your professor anymore but your father would want me to—"

"You and Dad and—and—" Potter stumbled. "You all fought, didn't you?"

Lupin frowned at Potter, but not as if he were upset with him. "Not overtly. Not till after graduation. You've been snooping, haven't you? Fighting him in your own underground ways?"

Lupin chuckled at Potter's blunt stare and tightlipped silence. "You wouldn't be James' son if you weren't spending some of the time getting in trouble."

"Remus," Mrs. Weasley said, "don't encourage him. Try the roast."

It went on like this till the feast was cleared away and replaced by Mrs. Weasley's masterpiece of a cake, double chocolate with white icing decorations of speeding snitches, phoenixes, and "Happy birthday, Harry" in her loopy scrawl.

"It looks amazing, Mrs. Weasley."

Mrs. Weasley kissed Potter on the forehead and Draco tried not to pull a face. Ginny frowned at Draco, so he didn't think he'd been that successful. Mrs. Weasley who was handing Potter the knife, didn't notice, however. As Potter was cutting into the cake, Fred asked Lupin what he'd heard of the Dark Lord lately.

"Really, Fred!" Mrs. Weasley said.

But Lupin put a hand to his temple. "It's not been good news, Fred. Another couple of dementor attacks. And they've found Igor Karkaroff's body in a shack up north."

"What?" Draco said before he could stop himself.

Lupin looked at him directly. "The Dark Mark had been set over it. Frankly, I'm surprised he stayed alive for as long as he did after deserting the Death Eaters. Sirius' brother Regulus only managed a few days as far as I can remember."

Draco frowned at Lupin, made his back rigid against the accusation in his glare. "Maybe this Regulus was just—"

"Yes, well," Mrs. Weasley hurried, "perhaps we should talk about something diff—"

"Ollivander's gone too," Mr. Weasley said, incurring the glare of his wife.

Draco started.

"The wandmaker?" Ginny asked. Her heart must be racing too for the same reason.

"That's the one. Shop's empty. No sign of a struggle. No one knows whether he left voluntarily or was kidnapped."

"But wands—" George began "—what'll people do for wands?"

"Make due with other makers," Lupin provided. "But Ollivander was the best and if the other side has got him it's not so good for us."

"But," Draco asked, "was anyone else in the shop?"

"What?"

They were all staring at him.

"He means Kari," Ginny supplied. "His granddaughter."

"And—"

"Of course," Ginny nodded, "and Alana. Alana O'Toule." Ginny frowned. "They do spend a lot of time with Mr. Ollivander."

Ron shook his head. Potter glowered.

"Ah." Mr. Weasley looked at his daughter, took off his glasses, and began to clean them on his shirt. "They're both all right. They—they were the ones who found him. I heard from one of the Aurors that questioned them."

xxxx

Draco ran up to his room as soon as he was allowed. He got out a piece of parchment, bottle of ink, and quill, and sat down at the desk. He looked at the blank paper. He looked at Alana's stack of letters.

What on earth did he say to her?

She had to be worried, terrified.

xxxx

Draco waited till he thought everyone was asleep, keeping himself awake by alternately reading Alana's letters and his textbooks. He crept down the stairs, remembering Ginny's lesson, careful of the noisier steps. He paused frequently to listen, kept waiting to see light ahead of him from the ground floor. But he heard no one and saw no light.

On the ground floor he crept to the kitchen, to the grate where the coals lay dead.

Draco knelt down on the hearth and, looking over his shoulder, listening once more, pulled out his wand.

He pointed it at the dark coals and muttered, "_Incendio_."

The coals spit tongues of fire.

Draco straightened, reached out, and took from the mantelpiece the jar that held the Weasleys' stash of Floo powder. He opened it and snitched a pinch. Just a pinch. He wouldn't need any more.

Once more he checked that he was alone and unwatched, then he tossed the powder on the flames and stepped into the grate as the fire blazed green. "Alana O'Toule's house," he said and the flames whipped him away through the network of wizards' fireplaces.

The green fire died and Draco unfolded himself from a different flue into a small dining room with a small table that wouldn't hold more than four and had only two chairs drawn up to it now. The room was windowless, but patterned moonlight filtered through a lace valance and parted curtains above a kitchen sink in the adjacent room, separated from this by only a worktop.

A few framed photos were on the mantelpiece. One showed Alana and a woman who had to be her mother, confirming that he'd arrived at the right house. Alana waved from the photo.

Draco smiled to himself and left by an archway in the opposite wall and found the foyer, the stairs, and a sitting room with a view of the street: small, brick, garden-fronted houses across the way, each with one of those monstrous cars or two pulled into its drive. Fog pawed at the window, curled around the corners of the houses, snuck beneath the cars. Draco climbed to the upper storeys carefully, quietly.

He'd never asked about Alana's house. He didn't actually know where her room was.

The stairs led him to a split-level, with a short flight climbing toward two doors on each side. Draco considered casting a charm to light the dark hallways, but feared Alana's mother, about whom he knew very little. He doubted, however, that she would approve of his coming to visit in the middle of the night.

Draco picked his way along one hallway and the then the other. The door at the end of the second, he decided, was Alana's. It had been decorated with small and larger handprints in pink. Green paint trailed from the palms. The effect was vaguely floral.

He pushed open the door, hoping he was right.

Moonlight showed him a bed with a small body curled beneath the duvet. The white light brushed silver into the hair that spilled across her pillow, that feathered across her cheek as she lay, her face towards him.

She didn't stir as he slipped into the room and shut the door again.

On the threshold, he hesitated.

But why? This was Alana.

He crossed to her bed. Still she didn't twitch. He reached out, hesitated again, then brushed the loose strands of her soft hair back behind her ear. She murmured and rolled onto her back.

Draco frowned.

The moonlight created hollows under her eyes. She blinked and her eyelids crept open.

She moaned again, moaned his name.

"It's—it's me, Gryff," he told her.

She smiled.

"Can I sit?"

Alana mumbled, "I'll wake up if you do." She reached out towards him and he took her hand, put it up against his cheek.

She started to scream and shoved a fist into her open mouth. Staring, she sat up, and took her hand from her mouth. "Draco?" she breathed.

"Yes, I—"

"It's you. It's really you."

"Yeah. I—"

"What are you doing here?" She gasped again, tore her hand from his, and used it to drag the duvet up over her front, burying herself up to her neck.

"I—I just—I came to see you."

"In the middle of the night. Draco— Shut your eyes."

"What?"

"Shut your eyes and let me up."

"Why?"

"Don't argue."

He didn't any more. He felt her leave the bed and worry slid an icy finger down his spine. Would she leave him here? There was a creaking and a soft _chunk_. She shifted aside things that crashed into one another. It sounded like… books? Draco bit his lip. Would her mother wake up? Then there was a swoosh of fabric and Alana said, "All right. You can open your eyes now."

He did. She stood before him in her dressing gown, tied tightly in front.

"I've seen you in your pajamas before, you know," he reminded. "There's no need to—"

"I know. Just—" She bit her lip. "Draco, what are you doing here?" she asked again.

"I told you."

"Why did you come to see me? How?"

"The Floo Network. And I—I wanted to see if you were all right," Draco confessed, dropping his gaze to his boots. "I—I heard—about Mr. Ollivander and—"

"Draco."

Her voice was tight, almost hoarse. He wasn't surprised to see the wetness glittering in her eyes when he looked up. He was across the room in a few strides and as his arms closed around her, hers did around him, and she burrowed her face into his shirtfront. His hands wrapped around her waist, pulled her close as she began to sob.

"Alana," he breathed.

Did he dare try to move her to the bed or should he let her cry herself out as they stood there? He raised a hand to her head, let it caress her loose hair, hurrying along the slope of her head to her neck and slowing as her neck met her shaking shoulders again. He pressed his lips against the top of her head. He let the faint scent of her perfume—or was it her shampoo?—embrace him as she did, let it fill him: a sunny field of flowers and maybe—maybe just the smallest trace of citrus, so faint that even he could bare it. He held her close, feeling the heaves of her chest, the shudders that wracked her, the warm wetness of her tears through his cotton shirt.

"Alana."

"Tell me," she choked, "tell me that he'll be all right."

"I'm not—I—"

"Kari's beside herself."

"Of course she is."

"Draco, what happened?"

"I don't know."

"You have to know."

"I don't. I didn't—I didn't hear the Dark Lord say anything about—about Mr. Ollivander."

Alana sobbed harder and he resumed his caresses, kissed her again, wrapped one arm around her shoulders and the other around her narrow body.

"The—the Aurors— They—"

Draco's heart leapt to his throat, choking him. "You—you saw the Aurors?" And what did you tell them? What did they ask?

Alana nodded. "They're not sure— They think that maybe— Draco, he's not— Mr. Ollivander can't be— He can't work for—"

Draco drew her closer, kept his eyes averted from hers, worked to smother the fear that had burned inside him. She wouldn't betray him. She'd not betrayed him at Hogwarts when she'd had the chance. But the Aurors were not Hogwarts students, were perhaps more threatening even than Callous Boor. "I don't know. The Dark Lord doesn't use names usually when he can avoid it. I—I don't think anyone—anyone but him knows who—"

"He's not. He can't be."

"I hope he isn't. But then, if he isn't—"

"What—" she wondered, whispered, "will happen to him? Is he— He's not— There was no Mark—"

Draco flinched despite himself and hoped that she didn't notice, tight though he held her.

"—over the shop, so he can't be dead, right? So—"

"Alana, I really don't know. I don't know what's happened to him. I don't know what the Dark Lord's planning. Come here," he said quickly, drawing her towards the bed. "Come here and tell me what you can. I'll try, Alana. I'll try to guess. But I don't know. I just don't know."

"This is horrible," she mumbled, but she half shuffled, half allowed Draco to carry her to the bed and settled down on it after him, their two bodies still pressed closely together, she turned in toward him, pressing her front against his, her arms still slung around his neck, his shoulders.

"I'm sorry," she grumbled into his shoulder. "I'm sorry you have to see me like this. I'm sorry. You— I must have— Your shirt is all wet."

"One quick spell and it's good as new," Draco promised.

"We're not allowed to do magic outside school."

"But the Ministry can't tell who's doing the spell if there are grown wizards about." To prove it, he drew his wand and first summoned a handkerchief for her from his trunk in the Burrow. "Here," he said.

She took it greedily and patted her eyes dry.

"I've never used it," he assured her. "Mum said it was gallant to carry one to give to women."

This earned him the weak, watery laugh for which he had hoped.

As she blew her nose, he conjured a quick, warm wind that air-dried her tears from his shirt. "See what I mean?" he asked as she emerged from the handkerchief.

"Yes," she mumbled. "Draco—Draco, my mum—"

"What about her?" he prompted because she bit her lip and fidgeted with the duvet cover.

"She—she wouldn't like—she wouldn't want you to—"

"I know. No woman wants her daughter visited by her boyfriend in the middle of the night, but—"

Alana shook her head. "Oh Draco. It's worse than that."

"Is she all right?"

"She's fine, but Draco— Draco, she saw us. At King's Cross. She—she demanded your name and then—then she said that she'd guessed you were a Malfoy when she saw you. She— Draco, she knew your father, I think. And I don't—don't think—"

Draco frowned. "I reckon your Gryffindor mum hated my father. As she should. And, let me guess, she hates me too?"

Alana nodded glumly, clung to him more tightly.

"But you don't seem so put-off," he noticed, closing his hand around her waist.

"You're not your father."

"No, I'm not."

"But she won't see that."

"Has she told you," Draco wondered, "that you can't see me again?"

Alana thought about it. "Not in so many words. She warned me against you. Told me some stories of your father. Draco—"

"I'm sure you've heard worse than she could conjure."

"Well, yes. But still…"

"Not a nice man," Draco agreed.

"No…."

For a moment, silence held them as they held each other. She waited in his arms, her ears open, ready to be filled. Her body bent like a dish, welcoming the wealth of confessions he had to bring to her now or later. They all began to build inside of Draco, jostling to be released. _I'm Marked. I was Marked long ago by the Dark Lord. Alana, Percy's a Death Eater. He told me to tell no one, but Potter, the Weasleys, Ginny could be in trouble. Alana, you wanted to know what was bothering me last June. Well…_

He couldn't tell her any of that.

"Tell me," he whispered to her instead, "about Mr. Ollivander."

"Oh Draco."

"I might not be able to stay long. I want to help you before I go. I want to answer your questions if I can."

Alana nodded, but muttered, "I wish you didn't have to go."

"But your mother."

She nodded again. "My mother." She took a deep breath and let it out again. Its warmth sank through the fibers of his shirt as her tears had done.

"Kari and I were going to see him. You know we do over the summer. He likes to see us, I think. Or," she sniffed, "liked." She ran a hand across her eyes. "It looked perfectly normal inside, but it was quiet. And we called out to Mr. Ollivander and we searched through the back rooms because sometimes he just doesn't hear us and we looked upstairs and we couldn't find him anywhere. That's when we started to worry."

"How do you know that he was taken by the Death Eaters if there was no Mark?"

"Frankly, we don't. We didn't. We thought maybe he'd just gone out for a bit. So we wandered down the alley for bit, but Draco, it's just depressing now. Most people are so scared. It's just eerie, so we went back. We ran into someone leaving the shop as we were going in and she told us that he wasn't there, that she'd been waiting nearly an hour and didn't want to wait anymore. I don't think she realized that we knew Mr. Ollivander. I think she thought that we were coming shopping."

"So," Draco started, "how did the Aurors get involved?"

"Well, we didn't know what to do. We waited upstairs. For hours. We made tea. We flipped through some of his books. And he never came.

"It was Mr. and Mrs. Ollivander—Kari's parents—who called the Aurors. They called me back to—to be a second witness—later that night.

"Mum says that they were right to do it, but she didn't seem to like them—I mean, I didn't really— They're scary, Draco. I don't know why, really. I'm know they're there to help, but—"

"But you keep company with me."

Alana started, sat upright, moved away from him. He let his hand fall, released her shoulders when she bolted. He dropped his gaze down to his knees, to avoid her stare.

"What? No, Draco, that's not— You think I—"

"Come on, Alana. It didn't cross your mind, the things you _could_ tell them?"

"I'd never."

"That's just it. Those secrets—secrets I filled you with—weighing on you. Maybe—maybe…." Draco made to stand.

Alana caught his hand.

"Sit."

Draco shut his eyes, didn't turn to face her. "I'm trouble for you, Gryff. I'll always be trouble for you."

"No."

Draco let go of a breath. "Alana—" he began. But where did he begin? And did he? He could fill her with more secrets, more weights to press against her heart, to sit in her stomach when she was forced to face more respectable company, but… hurt her again? Would he? Should he? No….

"I'll keep your secrets, Draco. I want to keep your secrets. You need me."

"I need no one."

"You need me," she repeated, "and I need you. You can't—"

He turned to her, his eyes open, staring. "I can't do what's best for you?" he finished. He sighed, backed up, and sat on the bed again. Her hands quickly entwined around his arm like the vines of a Devil's Snare. "No, I can't. Because it'd kill me. Sometimes I really think that."

"This _is_ best for me."

"Only because you don't know. You don't understand."

Alana watched him. "This is— Is this—what—what you weren't telling me? Last June?"

Draco nodded. "That. Others. More secrets."

"I don't want secrets. I mean, not between us. I want you to tell me."

"And I won't do it. I don't want to hurt you. Not anymore than I have to—for my sake—for yours."

Alana leant her head against his shoulder, her hands tight on his arm, circling the Mark that she didn't know that he bore.

"Draco," she breathed, "I love you. That won't change. Whatever. You _can_ tell me. Do you understand it yet? Whatever it is?"

"No," he said honestly, "I don't."

"But when you do, will you remember your promise?"

Draco frowned. He let his fingers stray along the back of her hand, ensnaring him. "I just don't want to hurt you, Gryff."


	7. Well Past Midnight Meetings

Draco found himself lying beside Alana, she beneath the duvet and he on top of it beneath a blanket. Alana had fallen asleep facing him. Her eyelashes cast lacey shadows over her smooth cheeks. Her lips were dark and flushed with his kisses. Still kissable now, but he didn't want to wake her, and he could still taste her on his own mouth. He let his tongue slip out to lick his lip.

He didn't know what hour it was, but the lateness of it tugged at his own eyelids even as he tried to hold them open, wanting to watch her while he could, to paint her, every detail, into his mind.

Alana's hand lay loose in front of her, between them. He reached for it. Would he wake her? He brushed his fingers across the top of hers. She sighed in her sleep, and he let his hand rest on the sheet, his fingers touching hers.

He gave in and let his heavy eyelids fall. So long as he could still feel her, her warmth, the solidness of her hand, he could be sure that she wouldn't leave him, that he wasn't merely dreaming this.

xxxx

But he lost her. He stood in a dark room that he knew all too well. He shivered, drawing his arms around himself, his hand empty. He couldn't feel Alana at all as he looked into the shadows cast by the low fire and felt no warmth from it.

The Dark Lord was quiet, but Draco knew that he was there.

He thought of Alana, of her embrace, missing it, and then of her tears, of the reason that he had come to her tonight in the first place. Anger began to move inside of him, its waking sparks smothering Alana's fire, the fire of her touch, her kiss that fear had already begun to dim. Two such fires couldn't burn at once.

He shouldn't—couldn't think of her. Not here. Not with him.

When the purr came from the darkness, Draco was ready for it, steeled. "Draco."

"My lord," he returned.

"You have called me?"

"I've not."

"Oh my Draco, you really must learn. You cannot control your desires. You do not recognize them yourself." He rose from an armchair with its back to Draco, and the firelight suddenly illuminated his skull-like face, his long-fingered hands. It flickered over his bone-white skin as he reached toward Draco.

Draco stepped back, away, but glared. "Don't touch me."

"So confused."

"Shut up."

"Tell me why you've called me here," the Dark Lord purred. "What is troubling you, my Draco?"

"You are."

"What have I done? I've not seen you for some time."

"You—you— Where's Mr. Ollivander?"

"The wandmaker?" The Dark Lord smiled.

"You have him."

"I do. He is safe enough. For now."

"What did you do? Did you threaten him?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Because people are saying he left of his own accord. They're saying he's yours."

The Dark Lord smiled. "He is mine. He is now."

Draco growled, surprising himself.

The Dark Lord moved toward the fireplace. He smiled at Draco, then looked down into the flames. "Oh yes. He is mine."

"I don't believe it of him."

"You don't want to."

"He would never join the Death Eaters."

"This is tedious."

"You're avoiding the question."

"He is mine. I have told you the answer you sought."

"But why? What did you do to him?"

"I had him brought to me. I need him."

"And how did you get him to join your stupid Death Eaters?"

The Dark Lord chuckled. "Careful, Draco." He turned his back on the fire, faced Draco, so that Draco could no longer see his expression in the low light. "Death Eater he is not. He will do as I say because he has no choice. I keep him. I have told him to behave. I have told him to do as I say. And you and I and he too it seems all know what happens to those who disobey me."

That thought like a nail to old wood split the wall that Draco had built of his anger; fear flooded through him and washed it away. He shuddered and looked away. The firelight licked Draco's bare feet. He had taken off his boots, left them by the side of Alana's bed.

The Dark Lord let a slow breath escape him, a hiss, something like a snake's purr.

"So Ollivander came here against his will," Draco mused, "and he's not working for you willingly."

"He's more willing to comply than die," the Dark Lord corrected.

"This is good."

"For whom?"

Draco didn't answer. "Will you let me go now?"

"In such a rush?"

Draco looked up at him, keeping his face a mask, not wanting the Dark Lord to discover whence he had come.

"I cannot send you back, Draco. When you call, you must send yourself away. It is only my superior strength that keeps me from being drawn to your side."

Draco started and stared. "But I've never learned how."

"I think you have."

"I haven't. I don't know how to send myself away."

"Really?"

Draco searched the Dark Lord's red stare for answers. Red like blood. Red like…

Gryffindor. Alana.

Draco shut his eyes, though he was reluctant to stand before the Dark Lord blind. But he couldn't think of her and look at him. Not without risking her. Draco fisted his hand.

And felt nothing. Nothing happened.

He heard the Dark Lord's low laugh.

He squeezed his hand more tightly shut till the nails bit into the skin, and he felt something stir beside him, and a quiet voice said, "Draco?"

His hand grew warm beneath a pressure.

He opened his eyes when she pressed a hand to each of his shoulders, leaned over him.

He woke to her kiss.

"Draco," she murmured, smiling, "we fell asleep. If Mum were to find us—"

"Ollivander," Draco gasped. He stared up into her face, dark in the moonlight, her eyes glinting like distant, steady stars. He tried to calm his sharp breaths. He released his closed fist, but throbbing pain lingered in the grooves in his palm, left by the stabbing of his nails.

But she was warm beside him, above him, her hand on his shoulder, her fingers finding the bare skin by his neck.

"Ollivander's not working for him. Or he's not working for him because he wants to."

"What?" Alana startled away from him, sitting up in bed as much as his weight on the duvet allowed.

He'd spoken without thinking, still half-asleep, still caught up in the news he'd learned, with his heart speeding hot adrenaline through his blood, his vein drumming against the hand that Alana hand had laid by his neck. He regretted it now.

But he had to tell. He had to tell her, or why had he asked?

"He— I—I had a dream," Draco muttered, sitting up too and running a hand through his hair. How had he gotten out? Without Alana leaning over him, he felt cold, wanted to move to her side, to take her hand in his. He reached out, but—

"A dream? Draco," she sighed.

"A real dream, I think."

"I don't think—"

"Alana—" he turned to look at her, her silhouette in the dark, haloed in silver by star- and moonlight, "—I saw him."

"Mr. Ollivander?"

"No. Him. The Dark Lord."

"Draco." She frowned. "Should you be— I mean, what are you doing, dreaming—"

"They're not—not ordinary dreams. This isn't the first." He ran his hand again through his hair, then suspicion spiking through his stomach, glared and added defensively, "And I don't like them. I wouldn't go if I didn't have to."

Alana only looked confused. She'd probably suspected nothing. He tried to let the suspicion drain away. He didn't have to worry about convincing her that he had left the Dark Lord, was trying to reclaim his life. "You were here the whole time," she said. "What are you talking about?"

"I don't know," Draco admitted, letting himself lay back down, sink deep into the duvet and pillow on her bed.

She leaned over him, ran a warm, soft hand along his face. "You had a nightmare." Her smile was meant to be reassuring, indulging, comforting. It was the sort of smile that he'd seen Mrs. Weasley wear when she told Ron, "You've outgrown another jumper."

"Yeah," Draco agreed. "I did."

"And you dreamed about You-Know-Who and Mr. Ollivander."

"I did dream about them. Well, about the Dark Lord telling me about Ollivander. He said he was forcing him to work for him."

"I shouldn't have filled your head with all that and then let you fall asleep. I'm sorry, Draco."

"Sorry? Alana, no." Draco sat up again, forcing her to sit upright too. "It wasn't— These aren't— He said that I— I thought you'd be glad to know."

Alana smiled and brushed her lips against his again, though he was frowning. When she pulled away she was frowning too. "I don't want to get my hopes up, Draco; I can't. If I do…. If I do and—and something happens to him…. Not that I suppose we'll ever know… if something does… not now…."

"Alana, I'm so sorry."

"This isn't your fault," she assured him, shaking her head.

But wasn't it?

Alana crept with him out of the bedroom and down the stairs. They said a lengthy and rather wordless goodbye by her hearth.

"If you need me," Draco said, as Alana held out her family's pot of Floo powder, "just—just let me know. Write me, I guess. I can sneak out again. Another night. And see you."

Alana smiled at him. "I will," she promised. "If I need you. But Draco," she warned, "be careful. I mean, if—if you— If the Weasleys catch you— I'm not sure they'd like—"

"I am careful."

"I just don't want you to— How are things with the Weasleys?" she asked, taking his hand again, holding it in hers.

Draco smiled as the warmth of her hand enfolded his. She was always so much warmer than he, even now when they'd been together most of the night—most of it. He had spent some of it with the Dark Lord. He felt his smile falter.

"I should have asked earlier, but…."

"You were distracted. They're," Draco said slowly, searching for a way to describe his time thus far, "better than I suspected—and worse. I'm only really getting outright, violent animosity from Ron anymore—and Percy. I think Percy hates me, but he won't act on it—much—or hasn't yet. He let me know once, and he's—he's been pretty much ignoring me since—for a while now."

"Draco, that's wonderful. Ginny? Mr. and Mrs. Weasley? Fred and George? You've gotten them all to like you?"

"'_Like'_ might be strong. Ginny I don't think _likes_ me, but she tolerates me. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley I think mostly feel sorry for me, but, you know," he shrugged, "it's not hate. And," he shook his head, eyes shut, "I don't know what's gotten into Fred and George," he said, opening his eyes back onto Alana's smiling face.

"That's really excellent, Draco."

"But Potter's come. And he's—he's—" Draco shook his head again. "You know what he's like. He's almost worse at the Burrow. Fewer professors to catch him at jinxing me, I suppose."

Alana squeezed his hand, looked at him, beaming. "You've done well, Draco," she said. "And you've another month—"

"Don't remind me," Draco mumbled.

"Maybe by September you can make Ron and Harry see reason. It'd make next term a lot nicer."

"Potter won't see sense. Alana." He kissed her again. "I'll see you soon."

"A month at the latest. Exactly now. It's August first."

He smiled at that, took a pinch of her Floo powder, and disappeared in another flare of green flame.

xxxx

"Well, well."

Draco jumped at the unexpected voice and actually hit his head on the mantelpiece. Swearing, he stumbled out of the fireplace with black and white sparks exploding before his eyes.

"Percy," he spat, looking up through the clearing haze at the smug redhead in pajamas and horn-rimmed glasses. The Floor powder had been burned away, and Percy was awash with orange light. Draco tried to think of his black shadow, as it stretched toward Percy, as menacing rather than facedown and prostrate in appeal.

Percy had a mug of something—coffee by the faint, lingering aroma—in his hands and did not look at all surprised to see Draco come staggering out of the fireplace into the kitchen.

"What're you doing here?" Draco demanded.

"I wanted to be here when you got back. I've been waiting up for you."

"There was no one watching, no one nearby when I left."

"I can creep as well as you can, and I didn't have to see you go to figure out that you'd left by Floo. Where've you been?"

"That doesn't matter. Have you really been waiting all this time?"

"Who's O'Toule?"

"Percy, I can't believe you— What?"

Percy smiled at him and took a sip of the drink. "I heard you say where you wanted to go: Alana O'Toule's house. Who's she?"

"That's none of your business," Draco growled.

"It is if you're using _our _Floo powder to sneak out of _our_ house to see her while you're under _our_—"

Draco threw out a hand. "Enough. I get it."

"Well?"

Draco glared at him. "If you'd been paying attention at dinner, you'd know who she is."

"Well, obviously she's someone you care about very much, someone who's close to Ollivander and his family. And possibly to Ginny. And that makes her very interesting at the moment. And possibly dangerous to my family. What's her connection to Ollivander?"

Draco stared at Percy, quickly shutting his mouth when he realized that his jaw had dropped. Percy. Percy was a Death Eater. Draco hadn't been able to get the Dark Lord to reveal his designs, but Percy might know— "What's he want with Ollivander?"

Percy shrugged, still calm, still unconcerned. "I'm far from in his inner circle, Malfoy. He doesn't tell me his plans. But I do know he's captured Ollivander. I do know that right now he might be interested to know who Ollivander is close to."

"If you do anything— If you make him think Alana— I'll kill you, Percy, I really might."

"Might," Percy scoffed. Then he said, watching Draco with his dark blue eyes, "She's also close to you. And that might make her even more interesting to him."

Draco slid his hand into his pocket. This was getting to be too much. Could he curse Percy? He certainly couldn't kill him. He didn't want to kill. He needed to make him—make him forget that he'd seen Draco, make him forget what he'd heard.

A Memory Charm, then.

Draco drew his wand.

"Oh, put it away," Percy snapped, his own wand suddenly visible above the table in his fist.

Draco didn't. He kept his wand in his hand, but he didn't raise it.

"You're too weak to kill me, Malfoy. Let's get that out of the way."

"I wasn't going to kill you," Draco told him honestly.

"What did you tell her, Malfoy?"

"Nothing about you, if that's what you mean. I meant to get information, not to give it. I went to make sure she was all right. Believe me," Draco couldn't quite suppress the grin, "you were one of the furthest things from our minds."

"I seem to remember Alana O'Toule. Vaguely, it's true, but she was a friend of Ginny's. I think I talked to her several times. I think I questioned her when Ginny started acting strangely—her first year." His blue eyes flashed when they turned on Draco. "Perhaps you didn't notice."

"Notice? Alana? No, I—"

"When Ginny started acting oddly."

"Beyond her very public humiliation on Valentine's Day, I paid your sister almost no attention her first year. There were enough other things going on, what with Mud—what with Muggle-borns Petrified every few weeks and no one sure who the Heir of Slytherin was."

"Humph. Yes, well…. If you say so."

"I do. I had no reason to pay attention to your sister—other than to ridicule her for being a Weasley, a habit which I'm trying very hard to kick."

Percy eyed him carefully, then blinked, and some of the fierceness died from his face. "Well, I just wanted to let you know that you're not careful enough. I have a stake in the care you take with your words and actions now and in who you're talking to about what. I want to make sure you keep your end."

"There are other ways to keep me quiet, Percy, more reliable ways."

"Ways more likely to get my family killed. You weren't wrong there, Malfoy. If you had been, I never would have taken your offer. Now get to bed, and mind your tongue or lose it."

"Yeah," Draco sighed, "you too, Percy."

Percy left the kitchen, setting his coffee mug in the sink. Draco stood on the hearth till Percy's slippered footsteps had faded into silence. He strained to hear Percy's door shut, but Percy was being too careful.

Draco wasn't being careful enough.

He crept up the dark steps and did not meet Percy on the way. He went to the landing of the bedroom in which he slept, from which he could see Percy's shut door.

Draco leant back against the wall, releasing a soft breath. He wanted Percy away, not slinking after him, listening to whatever he might say in the night. Draco pushed his hands into his temples. What would he do now? What more could he do? Maybe he ought to just sleep. Maybe he ought to wake Mrs. Weasley and ask her for a potion.

But no. He didn't want to tell her that he'd left. (He ought to have sworn Percy to the secret—if he could have.) He didn't want Mrs. Weasley to ask questions.

He'd have to take care of this on his own. He padded back down the steps. The kitchen was still bright and warm with the fire that Percy had lit while he awaited Draco's return. Draco went to the hob and set the kettle over the flame, removing the whistle from the spout.

He doubted he'd sleep now. He'd been awash with fear, had sunken into a sullen fret, had crept from the house, had been carried into Alana's arms, had slept by her side, had been to see the Dark Lord, his confessions had been disbelieved by Alana, and then he had been confronted by Percy. If anything more happened tonight he might collapse.

And that Alana had not believed that his dreams of the Dark Lord were genuine weighed heavily on him. She was in no less danger if she shut her eyes to the danger that Draco posed, but he had no way to convince her, and when he was honest with himself, he didn't want to frighten or push her away, selfish though it may be.

Draco fumbled through the cabinet, pausing frequently to listen for footsteps on the stairs, and found a box of chamomile tea. He spooned some into a mug and added the hot water, then tea in hand, leaned back against the stove so that the hob's fading heat curled up his back to his bent neck.

If sleep came to him, he'd give in, but he foresaw a long night of lying awake in the darkness with too many thoughts and a headache.

At least wasn't much night left.

_A/N: I'm not really satisfied with this, but I've held onto it for a long time now, making changes again and again. Critiques more than welcome. Cheers!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	8. Promises Like Pie Crust

_A/N: Wow. When I first published this chapter, I was looking forward to my freshman year at Hollins University. Friends, I've graduated. Heck, I've been graduated for eleven full months and have finished eight credits of graduate work in Children's Literature. If you happen to be reading this and your company happens to be looking for an editorial assistant or similar, contact me, hire me please! I'm available immediately, though I'm locally-bound by a lease till late May 2013._

_Yours forever, Tsona_

Draco staggered into an uneasy sleep mere hours before he would ordinarily be waking.

He tossed and turned on his worn innerspring mattress, until the rough, cotton sheets wound around him like a snake's coils.

His dreams were a flurry of images and sensations: Alana's gentle brush morphed into the Dark Lord's icy caress then his father's iron grip. The dark stillness of a bedroom that seemed to be both his at the Weasley's and Alana's erupted in a flash of emerald flames that might have been Floo powder or might have been a Killing Curse. Either way, Draco shivered and ducked from the bright heat. Alana's brown eyes flashed Percy's glaring dark blue.

Draco's eyes creaked open onto bright sunlight and all of his limbs heavy with exhaustion.

Mrs. Weasley was just setting a plate of kippers before Percy when Draco walked into the kitchen, dressed and preened but with raw, red eyes and a yawn just fading from his mouth. She turned to him with a slight frown and ventured a falsely bright, "Well, there you are. I was beginning to wonder... Did you sleep well?"

It was a loaded question. Draco merely shrugged.

"Percy was just saying that he thought he heard you up late last night."

Draco glanced toward the elder boy, but Percy kept his spectacled eyes averted, watching his fork.

"Were you up late?" Mrs. Weasley wondered.

"I couldn't get to sleep," Draco countered, knowing Mrs. Weasley wouldn't be pleased to know that he'd snuck out of the house. "I stayed up reading," he added for extra measure.

"Good book?" Another loaded question. She was trying to catch him in the lie.

"_A History of Magic_," came the quick reply. "I was rereading the chapter on the formation of the Ministry."

"An interesting topic," Percy offered from across the table, his narrowed eyes fastening on Draco's. He was onto Draco's plan. "One can only imagine what would have happened if the Wizards' Council had not acted, and Chief Swigart had been allowed to rule as he would have liked. Perhaps wizarding Britain might have fallen into the same chaos—"

"Thanks a lot, Malfoy," Ron grumbled out of the corner of mouth. "He'll never shut up now." Ginny rolled her eyes in agreement and propped her head in her hand, elbow resting beside her plate, in preparation for Percy's lecture.

Draco, however, had been hoping for just such a winded speech. If Percy continued to rant—and Percy had to lecture or risk being asked if he were ill—Mrs. Weasley might forget about her interrogation. Certainly she'd have a difficult time getting a word in. Draco smirked, and Percy frowned. Draco thought that the frown had more to do with Draco's expression than Percy's subject matter. Draco nodded, acting attentive, but Draco thought that Percy understood his nods as the acknowledgement of Draco's triumph, his signaled thanks for Percy's catching himself in this trap that forced him to free his captive mouse. Draco sat back, half-listening for the sake of his act, Percy's words just toppling over one another in his exhausted brain and kept up a chorus of "Certainly"s and "I can't imagine"s.

But Draco was as glad as anyone when Mrs. Weasley reminded Percy that he had to get to work, and Percy's lecture came to an abrupt halt midway through the Wizards' Council's plans for the new Ministry for Magic.

xxxx

He avoided Percy when he arrived home, was guarded by the Weasleys' company during dinner, but Percy followed him to his room that night.

When the door opened, Draco, sitting in bed beneath the covers and _A History of Magic_, grabbed his wand and aimed it as at the opening door as Percy entered. Percy had his wand drawn too, and his eyes fixed on Draco even as he shut the door behind himself.

"Think that was clever, don't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Draco countered. "What're you doing in my bedroom, Weasley?"

"What were you doing in mine, Malfoy?"

"Touché." Draco didn't lower his wand.

Percy stood between Draco and the exit, between Draco and any unlikely rescue.

"So did you tell your mother I left the house?" Draco asked.

"No."

"Then why are you here?"

"To remind you that I could. To remind you that you're not safe here, that lies won't protect you."

"But lies'll protect you," Draco accused.

Percy smiled crookedly. "That's different."

"How so?" Draco demanded.

"Because my lies make me look innocent, and your lies make you look like a murderer at best. Because I'm lying to those who love me, and you're trying to tell the truth to those who hate you. You're not careful, Malfoy, and you need to be."

"Nice of you to care."

"I care because your clumsiness could jeopardize my lies, and I don't want that—and nor, remember, do you."

"I wasn't so clumsy this morning when I was distracting your mother. And you're the one who told her you heard me awake. If you'd kept silent, I wouldn't have had to defend myself; I wouldn't have had to distract her."

Percy smiled. "I can't miss the chance to try and get you thrown from the house, can I? And once you're on the streets, maybe you'll even _thank_ me for telling the Dark Lord where to find you."

"If I'm ousted from the house, you won't know where to find me," Draco reminded.

"I can hunt. And I have the resources of the Ministry. And I somehow doubt that you could effectively disappear, Malfoy."

"I could try."

xxxx

But Draco guarded himself over the next few days and was careful to avoid Percy, even to avoid his eyes at mealtimes.

But on the third night, his resolve was tested.

The Mark burst into searing fire again while he lay in bed, and Draco was jerked from sleep with a shout. He bit his lip. He drew blood. He tried to smother the flames with his hand, but that did no good—it never did, though the action was reflex. He scrubbed at his eyes. He drew his knees up to his chest. He bit his knees.

And when the pain began to wane and he was again able to think about anything but the pain, he fell to wondering why the Dark Lord had called his followers to him. Percy must be back by now and Percy knew why. Draco knew Percy wouldn't tell him if he woke him to ask. Percy would never tell him.

Percy knew, and Draco couldn't.

xxxx

Draco came down the next morning, late again, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

Mrs. Weasley frowned at him as he sat down. "Are you feeling ill, Draco? It doesn't seem like you to sleep in so late, and that's twice now this week."

Draco bit back the retort that she hardly knew what was normal for him, did she. "I'm all right, Mrs. Weasley," he said instead. "Just a rou—" but he bit down that response quickly too. Telling her even something as vague as that he'd had a rough night would raise eyebrows—Potter's if no one else's. "I'm just tired, I guess," he settled for mumbling.

Mrs. Weasley's frown deepened, but she passed him a plate of toast and sausage.

Draco wished he could eat with gusto just to prove that he felt fine, but he couldn't muster the energy. He cut and chewed slowly while his eyes traveled around the table, trying to twig whether anyone at the table suspected his reasons for sleeping late this morning.

Inevitably, his wandering gaze came to Percy, who was just stifling a yawn. He had done his best to hide the signs of his late night outing, but bags still gathered beneath his horn-rims, if his hair was neatly parted and his clothes were carefully arranged.

Percy noticed Draco watching him and nodded, but his smug smile was more of a grimace.

Draco frowned, but Percy looked quickly away.

Draco continued to watch him. Percy wasn't sluggish. He was jumpy, starting when a porridge spoon clattered against the china or a knife scraped a fork. Maybe that was just his reaction to little sleep. People reacted differently, didn't they? But—

Had something happened last night to frighten Percy?

Draco could think of no way to ask, not at the table.

What could have happened?

"What are you all planning to do today?" Mrs. Weasley wondered. "Percy—" Percy jumped at the sound of his name and his knuckles whitened on his knife. He looked up, startled, at his mother, and Draco frowned, as did Mrs. Weasley. "Percy, dear, are you all right? You look dreadfully pale all of a sudden. You're not coming down ill, are you? If you and Draco have managed to catch the same sickness—"

"I'm fine, Mum," Percy groaned.

Mrs. Weasley frowned. "As is Draco. Maybe you two had both better take it easy today. Percy, dear, you have to be fit for work tomorrow. Do you want me to look through my _Healer's Helpmate_? See if I can't find something to match the symp—"

"Mum, I'm fine," Percy repeated sharply.

Mrs. Weasley turned to Draco. "Draco, maybe you'll let me check you, and then—"

Draco shook his head. "It's really nothing, Mrs. Weasley. Please don't worry about it."

xxxx

Both Percy and Draco were compelled to go upstairs to their rooms after breakfast, however, so Draco did manage to get Percy alone, and as they climbed the stairs, Draco hesitated and called the elder's name. For a moment, Draco thought that Percy would ignore him, but then Percy stopped several steps above and without turning spat, "What, Malfoy?"

"You went out last night." Draco said it as a fact not a question, not an accusation. "What happened?"

Percy turned around with a vicious sneer. "If you really want to know, Malfoy, you should come. I bet he'd be glad to see you." He began to climb again.

Draco frowned and dogged Percy. "You're not yourself," he hissed. "Something happened," Draco persisted. "Something happened to you. What did he say to you, Percy? What did he do to you?"

Percy flinched. "I'm not going to tell you, am I, Malfoy?"

Draco got in front of Percy. "Is your family in danger, Percy? Am I? Do I—do I need to get out? Do they? Let me help you—if you—if they need help."

Percy pushed Draco out of the way and climbed past him. "You think my family would listen to you?"

Draco hesitated, standing on the side of the step where Percy had shoved him. "Your mum and dad might." He caught Percy up. "Percy, if the Death Eaters are coming, let me know. Let me try. What harm could it do? Compared to what good it might do."

Percy hesitated, looking down at Draco. Then he shook his head. "My family's not in trouble. The Death Eaters aren't coming."

Draco nodded. "But something did happen, didn't it? He said something to you. Something's going to happen."

"I told you, Malfoy, I can't tell you, so go away."

"Is he going to attack the—"

"Malfoy, _shut up_!"

Draco looked up at him without wavering, waiting.

"Yes," Percy said slowly, "he's planning something. Isn't he always? But I don't think it puts anyone in any immediate danger—not my family nor anyone here that I care about anyway. I don't even think it immediately puts you in danger, so you can shove that question back down your throat. I just—I just got a glimpse of what's coming, all right?"

"And now are you ready to admit that I was right?" Draco bullied. "Are you ready to admit that you were wrong for joining?"

"I still think I was right. This is your landing, Malfoy."

xxxx

But Draco really wasn't satisfied with Percy's answers—dismissals, and he turned over all that Percy had said and done that morning as he lay on his bed, staring up at the uneven ceiling.

Something bad was coming; that was clear enough. Maybe it didn't directly affect the Weasleys—or Potter. Maybe it would, and Percy was fooling himself—or being fooled. The Dark Lord might withhold information, mightn't he, if he thought that too much information would too greatly challenge Percy's loyalty? That would be like him, to hide the truth for his own personal security.

So what if—what if—

Draco rolled over. Alana's letters were still spilled over his desk. What would Alana have him do?

That was obvious, wasn't it? She'd want him to act, to protect whomever he could—so long, he hoped, as he would protect himself, return to her afterwards.

He should tell someone, but if he tried to broach this with any of the Weasleys…..

He could tell Ginny. Ginny might credit him for it—if she believed him.

But why? Why involve Ginny? He'd just be putting her at risk, wouldn't he? And himself too. He couldn't trust her to keep it to herself. Hell, he'd be asking her to tell Potter, to try and get Potter to see sense, since Potter wouldn't believe sense could arrive in Draco's guise. And the more people he told, the more likely that Percy would discover that Draco had broken his promise, that Draco had forfeited his life by the terms of their deal.

He should keep this between as few people as he could.

So himself and Potter. Go to Potter himself?

Potter would kill him for the mere suggestion. And if Potter didn't, Percy would see that Draco was killed later.

Unless Percy was put out of the way.

Unless Potter acted on Draco's advice.

Draco groaned and turned his back on the letters, wrapping his arms more tightly around his middle.

Having a conscience was such a burden sometimes.

xxxx

Draco climbed the crooked stairs with a feeling of mounting dread. Percy's words echoed in his mind. _'__You've become__noble. You're too stuck on payment and responsibility__.'_ Draco, gritting his teeth against the idea of what he was about to do, thought that Percy was probably right.

He crept past Percy's bedroom, past the twins', past Ginny's, and turned the final corner in the staircase. He'd never been this deep into the Burrow before. He glanced nervously back over his shoulder, wanting to turn around but knowing that he couldn't, that he'd never again get up the courage to mount this last flight.

The paint was peeling off the door at the top of the house, the cheap wood showing through in places, as it was on most of the Burrow's doors. The only thing that marked it as different from any of the others was a simple wooden plaque reading "RONALD'S ROOM." Those two words filled Draco with dread. He couldn't do it, and yet he had to. Maybe they'd be out?

But no, in the silence of his hesitation, Draco could hear muffled voices from behind the door. His luck was not so grand as that.

Draco's fist rose almost of its own volition and fell softly on the wood. The voices stopped. Draco waited.

The door creaked open a moment later to reveal a strip of face: a bright blue eye, freckles, and a shock of flaming red hair.

"Malfoy?" Ron gaped.

Draco hadn't planned this far in advance. He hadn't really expected to make it to this point. He wasn't sure what to say or do. He decided it best to be brief. "Is Potter there?"

"Why?" Ron asked suspiciously, but a second voice answered from behind him, "I'm here."

A hand curled around the wood of the door and forced it open wider. Harry stood behind Ron, the two of them framed against the violent orange of Ron's walls and furniture. Harry especially was vivid against it, like a dark beacon of dislike as he demanded coldly, "What do you want?"

Draco blinked, blinded and disgusted by the color, but he couldn't let it distract him. He dropped his eyes to avoid the glare. "I need to talk to you."

"Well, you seem to be succeeding," Potter sneered. "Make it quick."

"No," Draco argued, looking anxiously behind him. "Alone."

Potter paused and then said slowly, "Anything you have to say to me, you can say to Ron. I'll tell him anyway."

Ron smiled at his friend in thanks, but Draco continued to protest. "No."

"Then it can't be that important," Potter concluded. "Go away, Malfoy. You're fouling the air." Potter began to shut the door, but Draco threw out a hand to catch it.

"No." He stood there a moment, Potter looking at him with disdain, and Ron in surprise, as if even now he couldn't believe that Draco had had the gall to knock on his door. "All right," Draco whispered. "All right, but you have to swear never to repeat anything I tell you. I'm already risking too much."

"That will depend on what you have to tell," Potter said coolly as he stepped away from the door. It was an answer very like those Draco had heard his father use. Not to him, but to others; with Draco his tone had always been brisk; he had never wasted breath being suave.

Ron remained there, though, eyes narrowed and brows low. "Why would you risk anything for us?"

"He wouldn't. He's just being dramatic," Potter asserted with an offhanded confidence. "Let him in, Ron."

Ron took just a small step backward to let Draco creep nervously past. It was Potter who shut the door behind Draco.

Being in this room was like being in a furnace, and Draco felt his temperature creeping upward. "I am not just being dramatic. I'm serious. You can't tell anyone."

Potter plopped himself down on the bed, which Draco had failed to notice as its quilt matched the walls. It sank down beneath his weight. "Just get on with it, Malfoy."

Draco bit his tongue and glanced at Ron, who had moved over toward the window. The sunlight backlit him, making it difficult to see his face. He might almost have been Percy except that he was so much weedier, reflecting his father's tall stature more than his mother's squatter build. "It's Percy," Draco answered tightly, lowering his voice. He half hoped Ron would be unable to hear him.

"What about him?" Ron asked quickly, turning around. "Is he in trouble?"

Potter shushed him, but Draco looked across at Ron and nodded once. He heard Ron's breath catch as Draco dropped his eyes to the wooden floorboards. Here too were the signs of neglect and heavy use. The air felt taut, weighed down by silence and nerves until it seemed just about ready to break.

But Potter didn't let the silence go on long. "I don't suppose you're going to elaborate, are you?" he asked aggressively. "Your precious life mean too much to you? Gotten this far and now you can't go any further? The Death Eaters have killed people for revealing less information before."

The comment broke the stopper in Draco's quavering voice. It burst from him in a boil of blood. "Shut up, Potter! If I've told you once— I'm not the bloody Death Eater in this house!" He realized too late the loose words that he had spewed, registered them with horror even as Potter leapt to his feet and then was upon Draco, his wand in the hollow of Draco's throat.

"Explain, you bastard. Who did you let in?" Potter's eyes were black, burned to char by his anger and hatred. Draco swallowed against the wandtip.

"Who is it? I told you once, you little creep, if you hurt any Weasley, I'll—"

"Percy," Draco managed to gasp as the wand grew warm against his flesh.

Ron had been cowering in the corner and now inched forward a bit. "Harry? Harry mate, maybe..."

"Maybe what?"

"He is trying to warn us. Let him go. Let him speak."

Potter's sharp, dark eyes swung to Ron. Slowly, he released a quivering Draco.

Draco put a hand against his neck, shielding it from another attack. "Thank you," he breathed with sincerity to Ron.

"Tell us about Percy. Now," Potter demanded, his breathing still heavy.

Draco hesitated a moment, but Potter's outburst had taught him he didn't have much time to fret. "Don't trust him."

"That's what you have to say to us? Not to trust Percy? That means a hell of a lot coming from your filthy, lying mouth."

"Potter, please! I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be telling you even this much. Percy threatened to take me to—to—" Draco glanced at Ron again, then returned to Potter. Potter was why he was here. Potter had to know. "He threatened to take me to the Dark Lord if I—"

"Why would Percy take you to Voldemort?" Harry spat quickly.

Ron shuddered. Draco flinched, but sought to overlook it. "I'm trying to tell you, Potter. He's a Death Eater."

A silence followed this revelation. Both Ron and Harry were staring at him, dumbfounded.

"Percy?" Ron breathed at last. "A Death Eater?"

"Yes," Draco exclaimed, relieved.

"But—" Ron looked to Potter for support and found it.

"Idiot. You expect us to believe that? _Percy?_"

"But it's true! I saw him!"

"Oh? At a meeting, were you?"

"No. I wasn't, but Percy was getting ready to—"

"Percy's not a Death Eater," Potter said baldly.

"He is! Look Potter, I knew you wouldn't believe me, but you—you have to watch your step around him. Something's going to happen. Soon. I got Percy to admit as much. And he's worried. He doesn't realize what he's doing. Not really. He thinks you'll all be all right, but he won't protect you through any amount of loyalty. The Dark Lord doesn't work like that and—"

"And you talk like someone who knows Voldemort really well."

"I do! But," Draco hurried to add, "I'm not a Death Eater. I left, Potter."

"You've said, and I still don't believe you."

"But you have to believe me about Percy."

"Why? You need me to distrust Percy so you can," Potter threw up his hands, turning away, "I don't know, sneak someone else in here, keep Percy from—from—" Potter swung back around to face Draco. "You know, I can't even pretend to think like you do. But I trust Percy a hell of a lot more than I trust you, Malfoy, and I'm not going to suddenly start fawning all over you because you perjure one of my friends, all right?"

Draco scowled at him, hardly willing to believe Potter could be so thickheaded. His breath, when it issued forth, came out in a hiss like steam, "Fine. Fine," he repeated. "I tried to do something to help you, Potter. But I see now you can't possibly let your morals down, even for a moment, to let a Death Eater's son do that. Sorry to have bothered you."

Still riding on his own anger, he turned and stormed from the room. As he grabbed the knob to pull the door shut behind himself, he thought he heard above the pounding blood in his ears Potter mumble, "As you should be."

_A/N: Side note: I took this chapter's title from Christina Rossetti's poem of the same title. However, the poem does not make sense with this chapter. (It's still a good poem, and I suggest it.) I merely meant to imply that promises are flimsy and made to be broken._

_Yours forever,_

_Tsona_


	9. Unexpected Meetings

All was quiet on the crooked landing, the summer air hot and stuffy here at the top of the house. Draco turned his back on the pair of them, safely holed up in Weasley's room, and crossed his arms across his chest in huffy indignation. Well, fine. He'd done what he could. If Potter and Weasley didn't believe him, that was their own bloody fault, wasn't it? He'd warned them.

He began down the stairs, still breathing heavily. Whether it was this, the pounding blood in his ears, or his silent tirade that prevented him from hearing the soft footfalls he perhaps would never really know.

Percy rounded the corner in the stairwell, and he and Draco both froze, two pairs of eyes flying wide.

For a moment, the two of them merely stared at one another, then Percy's gaze slid past Draco up the steps that Draco had just descended. Draco's heart jumped to his throat as he saw Percy make the connection.

Percy looked at Draco. "What did you do?" he asked. "What did you say?"

"Don't jump to conclusions, Percy. The world doesn't revolve around your drama," Draco said with what he thought was quite impressively pretended nonchalance. Draco started walking, made to pass Percy, but Percy's hand shot forward and snared Draco's wrist, his fingers a tight noose.

"Let me go," Draco hissed, not looking at Percy but trying to break his vise.

"What did you say?" Percy hissed back. "Malfoy, what did you say?"

"Percy, I said nothing about you." But Draco knew—and he knew that Percy knew—that Draco lied.

Percy almost shoved Draco away, and Draco used the momentum to propel him down a few steps, where he turned, out of Percy's reach, and called, "Percy, what are _you_ doing up here?"

"I need a reason in my own house?"

"How do I know that you're not after Harry?"

Percy raised an eyebrow. "Harry?" he repeated. "I think that's the first time I've heard you use his given name."

"I—" Draco _had_ used Potter's given name. How had that slipped out? "So?"

"So Mum sent me, in answer to your earlier question. To fetch everyone for lunch." Percy started to climb the steps, waving a dismissive hand at Draco, who remained on the step, glaring. "Get downstairs, Malfoy. Mum'll be waiting, and I have to tell Ron and Harry it's time."

Percy disappeared behind the corner.

Draco hesitated still. Would Potter and Weasley out him? Would Percy go immediately to the Death Eaters? Would Draco hear from here if Potter or Ron shouted? Would Percy give them time to fight?

He heard the rap of Percy's knuckles on Ron's door.

Draco sprinted down the stairs.

If Potter and Weasley did tattle on him, he couldn't be around when Percy found out what Draco had said.

Draco slowed at the twins' landing. Percy wouldn't go off and kill Ron and Harry now would he?

Draco shook his head and continued to hurry down the stairs. No, Percy would laugh it off. He would endorse Potter's theories of Draco's ulterior motives and bring Potter and Weasley down for lunch. He would send for the Death Eaters later—or he would corner Draco, whisk him away, and come up with some story for his parents later of how Draco had fled. The Weasleys might never suspect what had happened. Even Dumbledore might never.

Draco passed Mr. and Mrs. Weasleys' door now. The smells of lunch—pasta, meatballs, and a rich sauce—drifted up the steps, but rather than calling him to the kitchen, they made him hesitate again. They were homely smells, the kind of smells that shouldn't be disturbed by imminent kidnapping and second-degree murder.

And if Draco were gone and Percy didn't know where to find him, well, it would be a few more days' time at least. Maybe he could think up a plan before the Death Eaters found him. Maybe Dumbledore would help him—if he wasn't too cross with Draco for leaving the Burrow.

At any rate, it would protect the Weasleys, and he'd done what he could to arm Harry.

He couldn't let Percy find him.

His time was up.

He had to get out, get away.

He banked right toward the front door.

The squeal and squeak of the old wood on its hinges screamed loud enough to beckon Mrs. Weasley, wand drawn, to the doorway of the kitchen.

"Draco?"

But he was already barreling outside, pulling the door to behind him.

"Draco!"

She threw the door open again, but he was already tearing over the grass towards the road, scattering the brown hens. He turned left, towards the village, he thought—he hoped. Better a crowded Muggle village than a deserted field.

"Get back here right now! Draco!"

Draco didn't look back.

He kept running, past the hedgerows and bracken and trees whose branches bent down to impede his flight, always just missing him. He ran without aim, merely to get himself as far away from the Burrow as possible, to snap the small thread of fondness that was keeping him earth-bound.

He wrinkled his nose as he sprinted past a field of black-spotted cows, then past a field of tall corn, glad of the cover that they provided him, though their respite seemed brief, and the road soon cut through more open pastureland beyond, finally ducking again into the deeper shadow of a grove.

He had a sharp stitch in his side by the time he passed the next house and paused long enough to glance back. The Burrow had vanished from sight, and the trees grew small and faint in the distance as they followed the narrow lane back the way he'd come. A hot breeze came whispering up the path, like the breath of a great beast. It stirred the leaves into a frantic hiss, as if they passed rumors of his flight to one another. The sweat that had broken out on his body turned cold and bit. He pushed his damp hair away from his eyes and looked around.

Ahead he could see the peaks of rooftops and the white planking of cheap Muggle siding above the hedgerows and wooden fences. The road widened. A low stonewall on the left side of the road fronting a Muggle's garden looked as good a place as any to collapse. Draco limped over on hot feet, sat heavily, and drew his sleeve across his face.

At least, he thought, it wasn't sunny. The gray clouds threatened a rain that he would welcome now, to wash away the sweat and grime, to cool his hot body.

A few slow breaths, but still his heart rattled his ribcage. A hand to his chest did nothing to douse its thunder either.

He'd left with nothing—nothing but his wand.

Stupid. He ought to have magically made his trunk feather-light and pocket-sized. Then he'd at least have a change of clothes. Then he'd have his cloak if it started to rain.

A man was coming down the street with a small dog very like a crup on a leash. The Muggle looked at Draco keenly from beneath bushy, white eyebrows.

Draco couldn't stay here forever. He forced a smile that he was sure looked more like a grimace as the man passed him. The man continued to watch Draco over his shoulder as he and his dog carried on down the pavement.

Draco looked away. He didn't know how to look like a Muggle. He didn't know what he was doing to look _not_ like a Muggle. He wore a long-sleeved, gray t-shirt and belted jeans. That's what a Muggle teenager would wear, right? The wand stuck into his belt probably didn't help, but Draco didn't dare discard it. In fact…

He drew the wand as he stood and continued up the pavement away from the Muggle man.

He passed several young girls twirling a rope between them, singing raucously, while I third girl jumped up and down as it came flying toward her. Draco wondered if the rope was jinxed. Further on, he passed several more children using chalk to sketch genre scenes onto a driveway made of the same, unnatural material as the road. Draco marveled that their parents would let them near chalk at such a young age; the only use he knew for it, he had come across in one of his father's Dark Arts books: to draw spheres of magical influence, so that you could perform dangerous spells without being scathed.

Soon the houses drew near the road and near one another till, several intersections later, the gardens gave way, and he was passing through a corridor of tiny townhouses distinguished and separated from one another only by the garish paint color chosen for the owner's whitewash, and now several automobiles rumbled past, several bikes, and more Muggles on foot, most of whom ignored him. Draco kept his head down as often as he could and still avoid running into any of the Muggles that he passed.

Not daring to cross the road as he saw some of the Muggles do when those noisy automobiles were now almost streaming past, sure that he would be carried away on their tide, he turned left.

Awnings hid colorful displays, rows of shelves, and bright, painted on advertisements. Several shops beckoned with smells almost as inviting as those of the Burrow that he had left behind, and his stomach growled, reminding him of the time, but Draco had no money with him at all and Muggles were unlikely to accept his Knuts anyway. He passed a shop in which a man sheared off a boy's hair with a humming, black box. Draco toyed momentarily with the idea of disguising himself likewise, but he didn't think that any such alteration would fool the Dark Lord or even his Death Eaters.

Farther down the road, as an irritating, light rain began to fall, he was whistled at by one of a pair of teenaged girls, huddling together beneath a garishly purple umbrella. He looked across the street at them, and both giggled, smiled broadly, and beckoned him to cross, waving their bare arms. Draco considered it. They might offer to help him. They might let him hide in their homes where the Dark Lord was sure never to look. He actually paused on the pavement, looking for a break in the current of autos before the sound of his drawled name—"Draco Malfoy"—made him start and wheel around.

Theodore Nott was lounging against the wall of an alley close by, his arms crossed over his narrow chest, and one long, denim-clad leg propped up on the brick, peeping from beneath the folds of a black, hooded cloak that even Draco knew was conspicuous in Muggle England. Crabbe and Goyle were with him, hulking shadows that nearly jammed the alley. Beneath their cloaks, the two of them both wore too tight muscle shirts that left their arms bare. Their recently acquired tattoos flashed like warnings at Draco.

"Come here," Theodore said to Draco, startling a response from him.

"What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you actually." Theodore carefully showed Draco his wand, casually spun it in a circle till the point targeted Draco. "Come on. I'd like a word."

"You're having one," Draco pointed out, crossing his arms. "Right here without me coming any nearer."

"I think what we have to discuss is best done out of sight and earshot of the Muggles. Come on, Malfoy, in the name of past friendship, don't make me set Crabbe and Goyle to drag you into our little niche. You of all people know they're up for that."

Draco glanced again at the thugs—his old companions—and at their tattoos. "I do," he agreed.

He followed Theodore farther into the alley, Crabbe and Goyle closing the exit to him as they followed.

"Malfoy?" Draco repeated. "Are we on last name terms now, Theodore?"

"Afraid so, Malfoy," Theodore said almost sadly.

"All right, then, Nott. What do you want?"

"I've told you why we're in Ottery St. Catchpole. Why are you?"

Draco frowned. "I'm hiding from you, aren't I?"

"Mm." Theodore nodded. "Funny you should choose a Muggle village near so many wizards' houses. We would not likely have ever found you otherwise. So who is it? The Diggorys? The Lovegoods?" Theodore's green gaze seemed to sharpen. "The Weasleys?"

"None of them," Draco spat, hoping that he hadn't started, or at least that Theodore would misinterpret his surprise. "I've a room at the local inn. I didn't realize any of those blood-traitors lived nearby," he added, "or I might've chosen a nicer neighborhood."

Theodore chuckled and grinned at Crabbe and Goyle. "Trust Malfoy to find wizards even when he's hiding with Muggles, eh?" He returned his attention to Draco. "But seriously," he said, "you know why we're looking for you."

"Of course I do," Draco growled. "Crabbe and Goyle are wearing their colors boldly enough. You sure that's wise?"

Theodore nodded again. "The Muggles don't know what they mean, do they?"

"That sign's been set above their houses often enough."

"And I'd hate to set it over this alleyway."

"What do you mean? Isn't that your mission, Nott? Kill the scummy, cowardly traitor who left your beloved master?"

"The Dark Lord just wants to see you again."

"And make me his puppet or another notch in his wand, yes. He made himself quite clear in March, and he's been popping in with reminders since."

"Has he?" Theodore asked, actually surprised.

"Not that it's any of your business."

"He knows where you are? And he's having us all expend ourselves on a search?"

"If he's having you search, I don't reckon he's twigged where I am now. He knew. I went back to Hogwarts like he knew I wanted to. Like you lot should have."

"Back to Dumbledore? Not likely."

"At least Dumbledore hasn't ever tried to fry me with an _Avada Kedavra_."

Theodore crossed his arms again, "Maybe not," Theodore agreed sourly, but then his gaze softened as he looked at Draco, almost as if he— "So are you happy?"

Draco started. "What?"

"Are you happy? Here in Ottery St. Catchpoie?"

"Are you here to kidnap me or have a pleasant chat, Nott?"

Theodore shrugged.

Draco pushed his rain-sodden hair away from his eyes. His shirt was starting to stick to his shoulders and arms too, unprotected, unlike Theodore's, by a woolen cloak where raindrops collected like diamonds. "The lodgings are cozy enough," Draco relented. "Anything beats Durmstrang," he couldn't help but add.

Theodore's gaze remained gentle. "Then I'd hate to take you away," he said. "Maybe we can come back later."

"What? And leave me here?"

"Is that what you want?"

Draco thought quickly. He needed to get out, didn't he? Get away from the Weasleys before he or Percy could bring the Dark Lord to their doorstep, and here he'd stumbled into three people who wanted him to leave too, would help him disappear—just—Draco looked back toward the main road—maybe more permanently than he'd like. And Theodore, Crabbe, and Goyle had no reason to make the connection between Ottery St. Catchpole and the Weaselys. No more than between the town and the Lovegoods or the Diggorys. And if suspicion could be cast on any of them, maybe blame would be cast on none of them. Maybe Draco could fight Theodore, Crabbe, and Goyle off. Maybe he could leave the Weasleys, disappear from their life, then disappear again, escape the Death Eaters, and—and what? Go where?

Too noble maybe, as Percy had said, but what more could Draco do?

"No," Draco decided. "It's not what I want."

"You don't want to stay?"

"No."

"You'll come back to the Dark Lord?"

"Well, I don't want to stay here."

Theodore looked at him carefully. "So," he said, "you're not happy here?"

"I'm through with it," Draco said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Take me with you. Now. I'll come quietly."

Crabbe guffawed. Goyle cracked his knuckles. Theodore looked as though Draco had swung a weight at him though. "You're a madman, Draco Malfoy," Theodore said, staring.

"Maybe I am," Draco allowed, "but it makes your job easier, doesn't it?"

"Too easy," Theodore agreed. "What're you playing at?"

"What do you mean?"

"Four months," Theodore waved his hands as he explained, the wand briefly lifting from Draco, "you've avoided the Dark Lord. You've shown no sign, I assume, of wanting to come back. What's happened to you that now you're eager to go? This place," Theodore waved a hand back towards the main road of Ottery St. Catchpole, "it can't be worse than what we'd bring you to, can it?"

"Horrible," Draco argued.

"But with comfortable lodgings. Better than Durmstrang, you've just said."

"Comfortable enough," Draco corrected. "Stop complaining, Nott, and let's go before I change my mind."

"No."

"No?"

"No," Theodore said again. "If this place is worse than the Dark Lord, if you'd rather go to him, well, I'm sure he'd want you to be suffering, wouldn't he?"

"Would he?"

"So we should leave you here to suffer."

"But—"

"But I won't let you get off free," Theodore said. He looked at Crabbe and Goyle. "Give him something to remember us by, will you? A black eye, a bruised rib, do what you like. I'll keep watch."

"We're… not taking him with us?" Crabbe said slowly.

"Haven't I just said, Crabbe?"

"But the Dark Lord—"

"Put me in charge," Theodore snapped, glaring at the muscular Crabbe. "Let me use my superior intelligence to decide what he'd want, and just you keep your mouth shut. We've never seen Malfoy as far as you're concerned—as far as the Dark Lord is concerned. We know where he is now—we not the Dark Lord. That's enough."

"But he'll leave," Goyle grunted.

Theodore looked at Draco and said, "I don't think so. Now," to Crabbe and Goyle again, "do what you do best, and let's go."

"Nott—"

"Shut up, Malfoy. Crabbe, Goyle, shut him up. I'm tired of his waffle."

Crabbe looked at Goyle, and Goyle shrugged. He advanced on Draco. Draco hesitated a moment too long, and Goyle's massive fist closed over his arm, squeezed vise-like. Goyle grabbed Draco's shoulder, spun him around, then shoved him at the brick wall. Draco's head exploded with a riot of stars, and he staggered but met only with Crabbe's fist, which sent him ricocheting again off the wall, stumbling, falling to the pavement.

"You shouldn't have left us, Malfoy," Goyle hissed as he picked Draco up off the ground and held him upright, hands pinned, while Crabbe aimed another punch at his face, the force of which snapped his head sideways and split the skin at his cheekbone.

Crabbe had him next and threw him again against the wall. This time before Draco could stand Goyle kicked him in the ribs and stepped on Draco's shoulder to keep him from rolling away as he groaned and tried to avoid the next strike of Goyle's massive boot, which caught Draco in the stomach and left him gasping and coughing while his shoulder protested Goyle's weight.

Draco swallowed. "Goyle. Crabbe."

"Shut up, Malfoy," Crabbe snarled, and he aimed a last kick at Draco's head.

_A/N: I would like to take a moment to thank GoogleMaps, whose street view feature you can thank for the details of Draco's journey into Ottery St. Cathchpole, which I've always associated with Ottery St. Mary in Devon. I did not think, when I was abroad in Spring 2010, to visit Ottery St. Mary, so my apologies that GoogleMaps is the best I can do for you._

_Also, here begins the discontinuity in the old and new chapters. If you read on from this point, you will be somewhat confused. My suggestion is to somehow bookmark this story (if you leave a review, it'll save the review and story in your "review history") if you're interested in its continuing and keep an eye on its summary, where I will be advertising the latest updated chapters. FanfictionNet will not send out updates of "new chapters" until I go beyond the original chapter count, which will probably be some time from now; I've been writing slowly as I am job hunting again, still volunteering, and also finishing up the first draft of my WIP._

_Thanks for understanding._

_Yours forever,_

_Tsona_


	10. One Good Turncoat Deserves Another

_A/N: I have to thank Cindy Eric for inspiring the opening for this chapter. Her essay, "Knights of Walpurgis," can be found in Wizarding World Press' _The Plot Thickens: Harry Potter Investigated by Fans for Fans_, page 64. As a point of interest, I'm on page 121. :-)_

_Yours forever, Tsona_

_As Muggle Britain was drawn into what they would later name World War II, they were unaware that war had already reached their shores. Rumors of the rise of the German Dark Wizard Grindelwald filtered into Britain, finding a welcome home in the ears of Knights of Walpurgis living secretly among British wizarding society. The Knights, one will remember, were first organized by the legendary Salazar Slytherin of Hogwarts fame to guard wizards and witches of the eleventh century from Muggles' brutality (suspicion was then high among Muggles and witch burnings a widespread practice). Since then, their purpose has been warped beyond recognition. Once seen as heroes and saviors of wizard-kind, modern-day Knights have come to be associated with pure-blood fanaticism and Muggle torture. These gathered beneath the banner of Grindelwald and set to work on one of the most infamous wizard-wizard genocides to date. Muggleborns (called "Mudbloods" by the Knights) were systematically tagged for destruction. Even Muggle-sympathizers (labeled by the Knights as "blood traitors") and half-blooded wizards of this era had to be wary lest they face the same fate. The hooded and masked Knights--_

A muffled knock echoed up through the house. _Someone come to the door_, Draco thought. _Probably an Order of the Phoenix member._ They would occasionally stop in for a word. There was no point sneaking out to try and eavesdrop, however. Mrs. Weasley was very adept at stoppering all their best efforts to overhear the Order's latest news. If Fred and George could not catch a word, Draco certainly wouldn't be able to.

_The hooded and masked Knights would arrive at the dwelling place of their intended victims in the dead of night, when there would be the least chance that they would be seen, always traveling in small groups of anywhere from two to six, depending on the perceived strength of the wizard or witch they had set out to kill. Their task having been accomplished, the Knights would set a mark above the house, a glistening arch of shadow that would hover for days despite the best efforts of Ministry officials, attracting the attention of Muggles and wizards alike. This pall was soon spied throughout the world as word of Grindelwald's willingness to shield all those who would work in his name spread. His power was then at its height and his name becoming so feared that--_

Draco glanced up once again as a second, timid knock sounded on his own bedroom door. He could not imagine why he should be wanted, but called, "Come in," all the same.

Mrs. Weasley poked her curl-enveloped head through the doorway. "Draco?" She moved uncertainly further into the room. Draco's eyes were drawn to her hands, which twisted upon each other anxiously.

"Mrs. Weasley, what is it?" he asked, alarmed.

"There's a boy at the front door." Her face was undeniably pale, too. "He says you'll know who he is. He-- he wants to see you."

"Why?" Draco inquired. He wished he had a window overlooking that part of the yard. Maybe then he could see who his visitor was before meeting him face-to-face. He couldn't think of anyone who would come to visit him over the summer, unless Blaise...

Mrs. Weasley's voice dropped to a fearful whisper. "He-- he says he has a message for you."

Draco regarded her curiously.

"From-- from-- Oh, _Draco_! from You-Know-Who!"

Draco froze, staring. Although he had been half-expecting this since he'd first seen Nott, Crabbe, and Goyle in the village of Ottery St. Catchpole over a week ago, it didn't make his horror at its arrival any less. His death had been imminent since he'd escaped Durmstrang in April. Really he ought to be relieved he'd lasted even this long against the Dark Lord's army.

Trembling, he folded his page in _A History of Magic_ and put the book aside on his bedside table. He looked up at Mrs. Weasley, meeting her dark, fear-filled eyes, feeling horribly empty.

"All right," he heard himself say, oddly calm. "I'll come down."

Mrs. Weasley blanched if possible even further, her face ghostly in the frame of her fiery hair. Her dark eyes darted around the room, fastening on the window. She opened her mouth as though to speak, but nothing came out. Finally, after trying twice more, she gave up and nodded.

Her eyes seemed strangely glassy as Draco passed her. He felt as if he were trapped in a nightmare, moving silently down the crooked stairs, feeling almost as if he were drifting rather than walking, disconnected from everything around him, the walls too near.

As they reached the bottom step, Draco paused and Mrs. Weasley, who had followed close behind him, whimpering and wringing her hands, quavered, "Front door, dear."

Draco tried to nod, but his neck felt stiff and all he could manage was a nervous swallow. He turned the corner. His hand reached out to grab the doorknob; Mrs. Weasley obviously hadn't felt comfortable leaving the door open to her Dark visitor.

Theodore Nott stood on the stoop. He was dressed in Muggle clothing and looked bored. The young Death Eater dragged his eyes slowly away from the yard, onto which they had wandered, and when they met Draco's, they were filled with a dark menace, hard and cold as emeralds. Draco was very aware of how tall he was as he looked up into his stony, freckled face.

"We need to talk."

"O-- okay," Draco trembled.

Nott's eyes passed over Draco's shoulder, and Draco following his gaze, saw Mrs. Weasley hovering anxiously behind him, her eyes still oddly bright, biting her lip.

"Not here," Nott said simply. "Walk with me."

Draco hesitated. He looked back at Mrs. Weasley. Their eyes met for a moment and Draco thought he saw her bite her lip still more firmly. "I'll be back," Draco murmured to her. "Don't follow. I'll-- I'll be back," he repeated, trying to convince himself as much as her.

Mrs. Weasley nodded once before fleeing around the corner into the kitchen. A dry sob followed him as he stepped outside into Nott's shadow and closed the door behind himself.

With a brief glare, Nott set off across the lawn, making for the stand of trees off to the side. He sidled beneath their emerald shadow and continued over the dried leaves, his shuffling step drawing deep furrows. When they were a good way in, the woods obstructing any view of the Burrow, Nott turned back to Draco.

Draco was astonished at the change that had come over him. He no longer seemed so tall as he slouched in upon himself, arms crossed over his thin chest. His green eyes had gone wide and a kind of terrified anxiety filled them. His freckly face had paled slightly; Draco half-thought he looked a bit green, but put this to the effect of the lighting.

"We need to talk," Nott repeated. "Sit." He pointed to a rotting log.

It was hardly what Draco wanted to do-- if he had to die, he'd rather have gone down standing-- but he thought it best not to argue. He lowered himself onto the log and Nott began to pace backward and forward before him, his hands knotted together.

Draco watched him perform several circuits before he next spoke. "I haven't got long," Nott muttered, moving his lips very little as though afraid they might be overheard. "The Dark Lord will miss me soon. I have to make it quick."

This statement made little sense. There was no point in Nott killing him without the Dark Lord's orders. He'd get no praise for it that way. But Nott had always been one to act alone.

Nott paused in his trek to stare pointedly at Draco. "You can't keep this up long. I've kept silent. I've warned Crabbe and Goyle not to say anything, but that's no guarantee they won't talk."

A surprised, "Oh!" was all that Draco could conjure. "So you haven't turned me in, then? You're not here to kill me?"

Nott dropped his gaze and resumed his pacing. "No." He completed a couple more laps. "Crabbe, Goyle, and I aren't the only Death Eaters who know, though, Draco. There's... another. I'm surprised, really, that he hasn't already informed against you. I'm not sure what he's playing at."

"Percy?"

Nott nodded solemnly. "Horrible, brown-nosing man." Draco smirked in agreement. "He won't keep quiet forever, Draco," Nott paused, his eyes flying up to meet Draco's again. "You'd do better to get out of here before it's too late."

"I've got a deal with him," Draco quickly assured him, uncomfortably aware that he had already broken his end.

"That might be," Nott murmured, "but I'm not sure that'll be enough. Do you trust him? Is the word of a Dark wizard really something to be trusted?"

"Apparently not," Draco frowned. "I'm guessing what you're doing now is considered treachery?"

Nott's expression darkened frighteningly. His eyes narrowed as he stared at Draco. "Did you know," he muttered, "that my dad was injured in the Dark Lord's service last June?"

Draco's eyes widened. "No. I hadn't heard. I'm sorry, Nott," he lied, thinking it best to feign sympathy.

Nott apparently bought it, for he nodded approvingly, and began to shuffle through the leaves again. "He went after Potter in the Department of Mysteries. Potter struggled and knocked over every bookcase in the Hall of Prophecy in an attempt to escape. My dad was caught beneath one." His expression became even more sour. "_Your father_ told the Death Eaters to leave him."

This news really did send a pang of sympathy through Draco. It seemed just the sort of thing his father would do.

"By the time the Aurors arrived, even _they_ had to pity his condition. They brought him to St. Mungo's rather than arrest him." Nott stopped pacing and heaved a great, forlorn sigh. "He died this morning."

"Oh, Nott," Draco moaned. Nott's mother had died when they were both ten; Draco had only hazy memories of her. With his father gone... "What will you do? Have you got somewhere to live?"

Nott kept his eyes downcast. "I guess I'll just go back to Dad's place. Keep on living there."

"Dumbledore could find somewhere for you," Draco suggested on a sudden impulse. "I'm sure he would."

Nott, though, shook his head firmly. "I'm not going to Dumbledore. I haven't yet stooped that low."

"But--"

"He was there that night, too, you know," Nott snarled. "To rescue Potter. He could have done something for me then, if he had wanted to. I'm not begging help from a man who doesn't want to give it."

"But, I'm sure he does. He helped me, didn't he? You deserve it more than I!"

Nott glared, furious. "_No_, Draco!"

Draco sat back, quiet.

"Besides, I still plan on returning to the Dark Lord. That's where Dad wanted me, and I'm not disobeying him. Not for something so trivial as this. The Dark Lord will help me if I need it."

Draco's eyes narrowed as he turned them to the forest floor. "You know he won't," Draco muttered mutinously.

Nott's flinty eyes pinned Draco. "How do you know? You hardly stayed long enough to find out."

Draco had to admit he had a point, but was loath to own to it. "I prefer my chances with Dumbledore," Draco stated plainly after a moment. He was surprised to hear himself declare it so firmly, especially to a known enemy. It was something he was quite certain he couldn't have done, even so soon as a month ago.

Nott seemed taken aback, too; his eyes widened. After a moment, he managed a grin that took all the fury out of his face. Draco was reminded forcefully of the boy who had come running to him in April, excited to show off his new brand. "You didn't turn out at all like I expected you to, Draco Malfoy."

"Yeah... you've changed too, Nott. I thought you were clever than this." It had escaped from him before he could stop it, and he watched Nott apprehensively for his reaction. Nott had always prided himself on his intelligence.

To Draco's great surprise, Nott let out a laugh. "I thought I was, too. But the world turns and we're forced to keep up."

Draco tried to decipher this statement, but Nott interrupted him. "I should get going," Nott said. He walked over to Draco and extended his hand. Draco stood to shake it. As the two of them let go, Nott looked back over his shoulder and muttered, "I have to admit, I envy you, Draco." He met Draco's curious grey gaze. "Once again, you've gotten what you wanted."

"I didn't know what I wanted till I got here," Draco contended.

"At least you're sure now. Well," Nott sighed, "I suppose this is goodbye, then. I hope I won't be seeing you again; next time, it'll have to be with a curse."

"You're sure you won't go to Dumbledore? I could take you there. We could go now. I know you don't _really_ want to go to the Dark Lord."

"No," Nott shook his head. He regarded Draco a second longer and then said, "Maybe, if things had turned out differently, I wouldn't go back to him. But as it is, I should go. My choice was made a long time ago. Good luck, Draco Malfoy."

Draco watched him sadly as he stepped forward with a spin and vanished into thin air. Feeling thoroughly dejected, he set off back through the woods, kicking at the moldering leaves. He couldn't help feeling that it was somehow his fault that Nott wouldn't accept help.

He had known Theodore Nott for many years now. They had played together as boys on the Manor grounds. He had always been a brooding sort of boy; Draco had been fond of telling him he'd be a lot more cheerful if he spent less time thinking. Nott's answers were brusque and wry and had often gotten on Draco's nerves, though as playmates had been scarce, Draco had then been willing to overlook it. Besides, he had usually bent to Draco's wishes in the end, unwilling to enter into any confrontation. Draco didn't think he would have liked him much if they had met now. Looking back, Draco supposed he ought to have seen this coming, known Nott would be easy prey for the Dark Lord, wouldn't argue against the demands being made of him.

As he pushed aside the last branches into the yard, a shout rent the summer air. "Mum! _MUM!_ He's coming! He's all right."

Glancing up, Draco saw Fred and George galloping across the lawn toward him, with Mrs. Weasley in their wake. Ginny poked her head curiously out of the open doorway. Draco had to grin as the twins pulled up beside him.

"Well, what did he want? Why did he let you go?"

Draco explained, as best he could, what Nott had said in the forest, allowing himself to be led back toward the house.

"He came to warn you? Before returning to You-Know-You?" whispered Mrs. Weasley, whose eyes were rather red and raw. "Oh that poor, dear boy. Poor, dear, _foolish_ boy."

They crossed over the threshold.

"So you've decided to come back."

Draco looked up. Harry was standing at the foot of the steps, his emerald eyes narrowed to slits of fury. His fist was clenched on his wand, the knuckles white. Draco felt a rush of anger at his audacity, not caring that Potter probably didn't realize he had just effected murder. His fingers itched to feel his own wand in his hand, to act as Nott had not the opportunity to.

"I suppose Nott came by to give you instructions from your master, did he?"

"_Harry!_"

"_No_, Mrs. Weasley. Someone has to keep him honest. If you won't, I will."

Draco dived for his wand, swinging it around toward Potter as it let out an incensed shower of green and silver sparks.

Potter looked unfazed, merely raising his own wand higher and watching Draco keenly. Draco noticed Ron out of the corner of his eye, hiding in the shadows of the stairwell, peer around the corner, eyebrows raised.

"_You!_" His voice was low, threatening. He was quivering slightly with rage, the wand wood warm beneath his fingers. "How _dare_ you! You want to know what Nott came to tell me, Potter? He came to tell me just what a cowardly, scummy swine you are!"

"Oh, what gives him that impression?" Harry sneered.

Draco was vaguely aware of Mrs. Weasley twittering beside him, trying to force his wand arm down. He kept it steady, his eyes locked on Harry's. "You killed his father!"

Harry paused a moment, blinking. Then, seeming to recover, he spat contemptuously, "I don't even know his father."

"And now, I guess, you never will. You dropped a bookcase on him, Potter."

"In the Department of Mysteries?" Harry's cold hatred returned instantly. "One of the Death Eaters?"

"That's right."

"Then the bastard deserved it," he declared coldly.

Draco snarled and swung his wand in an arch, ready to shout the first curse that came to his head, but someone else cast a spell first.

"_Expelliarmus!_"

Draco's wand flew out of his hand. Harry's did too. Mrs. Weasley, looking livid, caught both of them. "HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU TWO?! I WILL _NOT_ TOLERATE THIS KIND OF BEHAVIOR! I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE AGAINST EACH OTHER AND, FRANKLY, I DON'T CARE! AS LONG AS THE YOU ARE BENEATH THIS ROOF, YOU WILL KEEP WHATEVER ISSUES YOU HAVE WITH EACH OTHER TO YOURSELVES! IF EITHER OF YOU SO MUCH AS RAISES A WAND AGAINST _ANYONE_ IN THIS HOUSE AGAIN, I SWEAR I'LL--"

_A/N: We don't really need to hear Molly shout any more, do we? Especially not if it's going to go on for hours. I think you all get the idea. So, I know I said I've been looking forward to this chapter, but I think _you've_ all been looking forward to the next one. I won't say anything more here, though. You'll just have to come back next time and see if you agree. A few more thank yous, though, before I leave you to review. I needed to get a better handle on Nott at one point during this chapter-- J. K. Rowling's description, even the one on the Extras: Edits section of her website, was just so lacking-- and so turned to CentaurGirl42 and April56 for help. I recommend both of their stories. Now off you trot, the sooner I get feedback, the sooner I'll get you chapter 11._

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	11. An Eye for an Eye

_A/N: But two words: "At last!" I will also take this time to thank Jo for the wonders of book 7 and to assure you all that I intend to keep this fanfiction completely spoiler-free. Read without fear!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_

Draco lay miserably on his side, looking out toward the window as the sky darkened with the coming twilight and a thick blanket of gray cloud that was racing in from the West. Mrs. Weasley had sent him and Harry both up to bed-- Harry complaining loudly and bitterly that he hadn't done anything but defend himself-- proclaiming she wouldn't feed them again until they learned to get along. Even now the aromas of dinner floated up the staircase, enticing, wheedling. Draco suspected Mrs. Weasley had been liberal with the spices on purpose. The scent had a lot further to travel if Harry too was to be subjected to the same cajoling.

_Blackmail_, Draco thought sourly as his stomach betrayed his hunger. _That's what this is._ He rolled over to glare at the disgustingly yellow wall instead, so that the doorway was to his back, ignoring as best he could the moaning grumble from deep inside him. Like Harry, he thought he had been perfectly in the right. Harry had committed murder! That was hardly the sort of thing one can take lying down. And that Theodore could do nothing to defend himself made it all the worse. _Always so thoughtless, so tactless. Just like a bloody Gryffindor._

He felt the edges of sleep slipping into his brain, clouding it, darkening his vision as his eyelids began to flutter. He didn't want to sleep. More than anything, he longed to be upstairs pummeling Potter. He'd already tried the pillow, but it hadn't offered the same satisfaction; it didn't fight back.

The clouds had come. Rain was sloshing through the trees and into the garden beds. It drummed on the roof.

"_The Dark Lord will help me if I need it..."_

Draco was standing in a darkened room, a fire guttering in the grate in front of him, throwing a silvery-blue, cold light over the austere scene. The gleam caught on the dark paneling of the walls and the floor, surrounding him in a flickering, uneasy darkness. The only ornamentation of the room, black velvet drapes like those that had decorated the Great Hall at the end of his fourth year, had been hung at the windows to block out light, he knew, but they could not forestall the storm that raged outside. The wind caught at the heavy fabric, which strained at the end of its chains, cracking like a scourge in the gale. The curtains seemed eerily alive, like tethered Lethifolds. The tempest tossed a wide shimmering puddle at the window's foot, the rain. Draco listened through the cacophony of billowing fabric and clashing rain, waiting for what he knew would come: the quiet, icy voice that whispered in his mind, that misled and contorted his thoughts.

"Hello, Draco."

Draco shuddered as if he just been doused in a blast of the chilly summer rain. The cold penetrated him, sinking into his stomach in dread, seeping into his heart, which quickened its pace, desperate to dodge the deluge. He would not, could not look for the source of that voice. He gave his reply to the undulating curtains as they stretched toward him, groping.

"My Lord," he murmured. He wanted to shut his eyes against the terrible reality, but forced himself to continue watching the drapes' valiant efforts at escape, echoing their panic, unwilling to surrender himself the darkness.

A white, spiderish hand reached around Draco, pulling him closer in. It brushed absently along Draco's cheek, sending a bone-deep chill piercing through him, burning, like a razor blade, the lightest touch slicing deepest. It was all Draco could do to keep from crying out.

"You have not allowed me such access as this for some time."

"I wouldn't allow it to you now," Draco muttered before he could stop the thought.

The Dark Lord chortled quietly at his ear, his breath stirring Draco's feathery hair. The boy shuddered, closing his eyes against the menace that hovered so near to him, held him so close, with such selfish fondness.

"It's no use, Draco," the voice hissed. "You cannot resist me." A lazy finger traced his jawline again and, this time, Draco found his head being turned, wide-eyed, to meet the vertical pupils amid the burning crimson pools, like drops of blood in the ghostly face.

"You-- you look good, My Lord," Draco murmured, lied. He was glad of the Dark Lord's answering chuckle as it let him slide his eyes downward away from that nightmarish vision, if only for a moment.

"You fear me, Draco?"

"Of course I do."

The lipless mouth curled in a twisted doppelgänger of a smile. "But there is something you fear more, isn't there?"

"Not really."

"Oh yes there is," the Dark Lord argued. His voice was still atremble with a suppressed snigger. "You fear yourself."

"That's a silly thing to fear."

The leer grew wider. "You nearly lost control today, didn't you, Draco? You nearly let yourself loose on the Potter boy, didn't you?"

Draco's breath caught. His wide eyes met the Dark Lord's. "How did you--?"

"I know many things about you, Draco. Perhaps more than you do yourself. You don't like the part of you that would do such a thing."

"That part of me is you, isn't it?"

"Maybe." The Dark Lord slid an icy hand along his neck, turning Draco more forcefully toward him, his whole body twisting to face him full on now; he had thought the long fingers might close about his throat, force the breath from his lungs. The near miss sent another shiver through him. The Dark Lord's hands fastened on Draco's shoulders instead, possessive, hard, and biting, and his tone grew harsher, more direct. "Why didn't you let yourself attack him, Draco? Certainly he's offered you the provocation often enough? Certainly he hates you? You hate him?"

"I don't hate Harry," Draco contended before he had considered the argument.

The Dark Lord blinked. "Harry," he repeated. "Indeed."

There could be no retrieving the words. Draco wasn't fool enough to try. He waited instead for the blow to fall.

"You've grown fond of the boy? You think, perhaps, he does not deserve to be killed?"

"I--"

"You think I should leave him be? That I should let him make a fool of me? Chase me? Threaten me?"

Draco's mouth fell open. "No," he breathed. "No, my Lord--"

"_Do not lie to Lord Voldemort, Draco!_"

"I--" Draco felt his shoulders tense, grow more erect, firmer. The shout had awoken in him the power only such closeness to the Dark Lord seemed to, the cold, stealing venom that infected his veins, pumped through his heart, seeped into his mind, and added a barb to his tongue. "Fine. Maybe I _don't_ think you should kill him. Maybe I _would_ like to see him survive. Maybe I _do_ want him to defeat--"

The Dark Lord shook him violently. "_Fool!_" He was cast aside, pushed roughly to the ground so that the Dark Lord could draw his yew wand from his pocket. To compose himself, it seemed, he ran a long finger down the wood, caressing it as he had caressed Draco's face. "You admit to these things, then?" he asked quietly, bloody eyes gleaming as they fixed themselves upon Draco's. Draco was sure if he had had eyebrows, they would have been raised in surprise, in suspicion. The wand turned upon him, fixed on a point between his eyes.

Draco knew what would come if he told the truth. The Cruciatus Curse. Or worse still. But not death, never death. Not for him, not for this.

He let his eyes meet the Dark Lord's, trying for open sincerity, pleading in a different and more acceptable incarnation; Dobby had always assured him that honesty paid off in the end, though he had rarely seen any proof to back the statement. "Harry Potter," he avowed slowly, "dislikes me. As he dislikes anyone with ties to you. And, while I can't like being targeted, I understand why he does it, and I appreciate his reasoning. He isn't selfish. He doesn't hate me for his own sake, but because he thinks I threaten his friends. You have always said you value bravery. Why do you not recognize it in him?"

The Dark Lord lowered his wand a fraction, his eyes contracting as he scrutinized Draco, sitting helplessly before him, without showing any sign of a struggle, grey eyes clear and candid. "I do recognize it," he muttered, "but I can only appreciate it when I can turn it to my own advantage. He will not allow this. He remains instead an impediment."

"If you left him alone," Draco suggested, "left his friends alone--"

"_I will not give up the hunt!_" The Dark Lord's anger returned in an instant. Draco had overstepped his boundaries. A spiderish hand reached downward to snatch Draco's wrist and drag him, stumbling, to his feet, pulled close so that the Dark Lord's flat, snakelike nose was inches from his own, his quickened breath crashing on Draco's face. "_And I expect your help_," he hissed.

"Are you dense?" Draco wondered, his own grey eyes narrowing with vexation. "_I'm not helping you!_" It was a ridiculously foolish thing to say-- he realized it-- but Draco's reaction to being threatened had always been anger to match the danger, a reckless, dull-witted instinct.

The lipless mouth curled in a snarl and the cold fingers tightened their hold so that Draco felt the granules of his bones grinding against one another as they inched backward away from that icy snare. "You are prepared-- You understand--" Draco had never seen the Dark Lord so apoplectic. He wished he had sense enough to want to back away. He only wished his hand free, however, so that he could fight back; he needed his wand hand to keep himself balanced. "_You plan to work against me?_"

"You expect anything different if you're going to treat me like this?" Draco demanded over the agonized screams of his bones, shouting for release from the vise. He was clenching his jaw, pressing his teeth together in hopes of undercutting some of the pain in his wrist, but with little effect.

"_I_," the Dark Lord continued as though he hadn't heard him, "in whose veins-- _I_, who made you my heir?"

"Yeah, I'm really not too pleased about that, now you mention it," Draco ground out. The pain was beginning to make his knees buckle and still the Dark Lord's grip constricted.

"It is," the Dark Lord hissed, "an honor many of my more _faithful_ Death Eaters would give their right hands for!"

"And when have I ever shown any inclination to go with the grain?"

There was a crash of thunder from out of the open window, the lightning flashing across the room. It was only a moment, but more than long enough for Draco to see clearly the pure fury etched across the Dark Lord's white face, a seething pot ready to boil over. Draco had seen that look upon his father's face many a time before.

"What happens," the Dark Lord asked, his voice dropping low again, but quivering with ire, "to a tree, Draco, that stands stiffly before the mighty wind and will not bend to its will?"

Draco saw himself, white and scared and in pain, reflected in the enlarged pupils of his feline eyes, pools of blood eddying around him. He wanted more than anything to pull back, at the very least to close his eyes against those images of himself.

"It-- it breaks," he answered his reflected selves.

"That's right." The Dark Lord's voice was a sanguine hiss. "It breaks."

It took only the most casual of movements, betraying that the tactic had been employed many times before. The Dark Lord flicked his wrist, still holding Draco's captive, and a loud _crack_ resounded through the spartan room. Draco moaned, blind with nausea and pain, and dropped to his knees as his vision exploded in a whirl of white, dizzying lights behind his shut lids. He clutched his snapped wrist gingerly close to him, protective.

Far above him, he could hear the Dark Lord's wild, humorless laughter. It echoed in his hollow mind. "You are messing, Draco, with forces too strong for you! It was merely a branch I destroyed this time. Next time, I shall not be so merciful. Next time, I go in for the kill, unless you can prove yourself more pliable."

Draco swallowed and pushed his reply out on one of his quickened, shallow breaths. "You are a master of torture, my Lord, as ever. But," he felt the insane urge to have the final word, the last laugh, "I would have thought such Muggle methods below you?"

Draco could hear the Dark Lord's frown in his cold voice. "Your empty threats are hardly worth more, Draco. I have already told you how futile I believe your struggles to be. I believe you'll yet come limping back to me, and I need you whole enough to be of use to me then."

Draco groaned as another wave of sickness crashed over him. "What," he panted, "would you have me do?"

"Why! kill Potter, of course!"

Draco managed to choke down his nausea long enough to look up at the pallid, skeletal face now brimming with nefarious glee. "_Never_," he spat out before being overwhelmed again by pain.

"Never? You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

The Dark Lord frowned. "Then I suppose you have a funeral to plan, Malfoy."

"I suppose," Draco sighed, "I do."

The scene dissolved quickly into black and Draco found himself curled on the worn wood paneled floor of a very different room. The curtains had vanished, revealing the full extent of the storm, the purple clouds across which lightning ripped in jagged tears, the rain thundering against the roof, roiling down the window. Draco stretched out a blind hand and his fingers found the wooden frame of the ancient bed. He snatched at it, and with a great effort, managed to drag himself upright into a kneeling position, panting, sweating, his wrist flaming, throbbing. He was dizzy, all the blood gone from his head to the wound.

He swallowed again, fighting the wave of nausea. He had to conquer this. This was no worse than anything his father had ever done to him. This was not worse than the Cruciatus Curse.

His legs wobbled beneath him as he struggled to his feet, clutching at the mattress for support. Being upright again seemed to drain away some of the pain. At least he was whole, he was in one piece. Well, sort of.

He turned his eyes to the storm outside. Through the cascade of rain along the window, he could see the blurred trees standing sentinel at the edges of the field where they had played Quidditch. One was a young, supple sapling. The wind tore at it mercilessly. It branches whipped sideways, shedding a shower of leaves. The trunk bent to follow. It would not break; it would not fall. The sight made him jealous, frightened. Bend to the Dark Lord's will? Surely, in the end that was a more dreadful prospect than death?

He limped across to the window, staring at the young tree. He wanted to tell it to fight. He wanted to see if his prediction was right, if fighting would really kill someone and only obedience would save him in the end. But, he couldn't ask the tree to undertake that challenge for him. It made him think of Theodore Nott, the Dark Lord's reluctant soldier. What would happen to him? Would the Dark Lord find out that he had come back to Draco first? What he had told him? Then, not even blind devotion would save him. They both knew what he had risked.

A gentle, hesitant knock managed to make itself heard over the din of the storm. Draco turned just in time to see the bedroom door inch open. Another fork of lightning flashed on a pair of glasses.

As the thunder rumbled itself into nothing, a voice spoke from the darkness of the landing, quiet, tentative, like the knock that had preceded it. "Malfoy?"

It was a voice as well-known and as despised as the Dark Lord's. Draco's eyes narrowed as they scrutinized the silhouette that appeared as the speaker pushed the door wider: a small boy, no larger than Draco, whose dark hair stood on end. He was the last person Draco wanted to meet when he had a broken wrist, when it was all he could do to keep his feet firmly planted beneath him, when he had to bite his lip to keep from uttering a moan of pain. "What do you want, Potter?" He forced a cold strength into his voice, imitating his father's as much as he dared.

"Can I come in?" The answer was tremulous and too polite, but could not impress Draco.

"I don't really see what I can do about it," Draco shot, aware that he was again being too aggressive, berating himself, but without any force; sassing Harry was a far lesser crime than antagonizing the Dark Lord. "This is far more your house than mine, after all."

A grin flashed briefly across Harry's honest features. Draco regarded him skeptically as he sidled into the room, shutting the door behind himself. It was with even greater reservations that he watched Potter perch himself on the mattress, watched the worn springs take his weight with a groan. Potter's bare feet swung just above the floor. Draco could feel his eyes watching him, innocent, keen.

"Aren't you going to join me?" he inquired gently.

"_Join you?_" Draco snorted. "Oh no, Potter." He let his voice drop to an acidic hiss. "I wouldn't come near you with a fifty-foot javelin."

He regarded Harry's flinch with pleasure. "Thanks for that image, Malfoy."

"Oh, you're quite welcome." Draco turned his back on him, hiding his injured wrist, to recite wistfully, "A javelin! a javelin! my manor for a javelin!"

Draco thought he heard a faint, incredulous laugh behind him; it might have been a cough. Harry hid the moment well; he kept his voice steady, solemn. "You wouldn't."

It was Draco's turn to scoff. "Oh, wouldn't I? I thought I was a Death Eater, not to be trusted under any circumstances?"

Harry hesitated a moment, before declaring confidently if quietly, "You wouldn't hurt me."

Draco sighed heavily, but before he could compose another caustic reply-- pain was beginning to cloud his mind again-- Harry interrupted. "I've just had a dream."

"That one day we will live in a world where we are not judged by the purity of our blood but by the content of our character? That purebloods, Mudbloods, Muggles, half-bloods, and Squibs will one day live together in peace?"

"Don't use that word. And that's not a dream to scorn."

"Whatever, Potter. I know you like to believe the impossible, you and that Lovegood girl."

"I like Luna. And that wasn't my dream, anyway."

Draco sighed. He really wished Harry would just go. If he had wanted to have a sane, rational talk with wands away any other night, he'd have been pleased. Now, he wanted nothing more than to be alone and able to take his wand out and try to hit upon a pain killer charm. "You know, Potter, while I'm flattered you consider me a sage, I never even _took_ Divination. Perhaps your friend, Ronald--"

"Ron's asleep. And this dream was about you."

Draco couldn't suppress the amused smirk that crept onto his face as he let the sarcasm slide from his tongue. "Wow, Potter," he said as gravely as he could, "I didn't know you felt that way... I mean... it's not that I don't like you or anything. It's just... you're not my type. You understand?"

Harry groaned and Draco could tell he was bitterly vexed. "Not like that, Malfoy!"

"Well, then--"

"Did you just have a dream?" Harry cut across him.

Draco felt something catch in his chest, but suppressed it quickly. There was no possible way that Harry would know about his dream. It was incredible, ridiculous. Still, he could not help feeling slightly invaded. If he was dreaming, that was his own business, and Harry, who hated him, had no right to ask about it.

"Nose out, Potter, if you like it attached to your face." He tried to inject disparagement into his quivering voice, but feared he failed.

"You did, didn't you?" He could hear the wonder in Potter's voice, but also something akin to fear.

"Didn't I just tell you to nose out? And what do you care, anyway? It was my dream, not yours."

"Let me see your arm."

"_What?!_" Draco cradled his wrist even nearer and turned harsh eyes on Potter over his shoulder.

"Let me see your arm."

"Why?"

"Your wrist-- I felt-- Voldemort broke it, didn't he?"

Draco winced. He thought his eyes must have betrayed the truth as a flicker of fear, wholly unconnected to Harry's use of the name, ran through him. At any rate, Harry leapt from the bed and around Draco before he had recovered enough sense to turn away. Eyes wide in the flash of another bolt of lightning, he peered at the rapidly swelling wrist and lowered a shaking finger toward it.

"Don't touch it, Potter!" Draco yelped, dragging it away. "Are you mad?"

Harry looked up into his face, his scar livid against his pale skin. Draco wasn't used to seeing that concern in the green eyes as they regarded him; that had always been a privilege for others. "Does it still hurt?"

"Of course it hurts, Potter! It's _broken_. You've just said so yourself."

"You've got to go to Mrs. Weasley. She'll-- she'll want to fix it."

"I'm not going to Mrs. Weasley," Draco spat. "It'll heal on its own."

"I'm not sure it will. And it certainly won't do so quickly."

"Maybe quicker than you think." He had spent enough nights locked in his bedroom at the Manor or in the armoire there, covered in bruises and cuts, which had always healed themselves overnight.

"I really think--"

"Do you?" Draco inquired. "Well, isn't that nice to know. When I begin trusting your opinion, perhaps I'll remember that."

Harry set his mouth in a pertinacious line. "Wait here," he said firmly.

"What? Potter, no," he moaned.

"If you won't go and wake her, I will." He hesitated a moment, then added, "I owe you."

"Owe me? What for?" Draco couldn't help satisfying his piqued curiosity.

Harry's eyes were still grim. "I heard your defense of me. I heard every word you said. And I don't think I've yet done even one thing to deserve it."

Draco hesitated, then repeated his argument to the Dark Lord. "You're a decent person, Potter. That's not enough?"

Harry quirked a smile. "I don't think so, no. Wait here," he repeated and as he dashed out the door, Draco couldn't help calling, "Where would I go?"

Harry's answer made him chuckle to himself. "Anywhere. You can Apparate." He listened to Harry clattering down the stairs and crossed to the bed, sinking down to reflect that, in a saner frame of mind, he'd have questioned Harry further, he'd have found out how he'd spied on in his inmost thoughts. Now, though, Draco found he didn't care. It was worth whatever illegal devices Harry was using to see those green eyes directed toward him without any hostility, with concern.

He didn't have to wait long before he heard footsteps on the stairs again. He stood as Mrs. Weasley came bustling through the doorway, her face white in its frame of curls. She crossed the room with a cry of, "Oh, Draco!" He was eased back onto the bed and she carefully pulled his sleeve back away from the shattered wrist. Draco found himself glad that the Dark Lord had had the foresight to break his right wrist instead of the left, as he would have had to expose the Mark to Mrs. Weasley otherwise.

She was twittering on and Draco became aware vaguely that it was directed at him. "--says You-Know-Who did it. But, of course, that's ridiculous. You haven't been anyway near him, have you, Draco?"

Draco hesitated, searching the dark, anxious eyes Mrs. Weasley raised to his. In this dim lighting, they might have been Alana's. "Yeah," he muttered. "He did do it. But I'm not sure how."

As Mrs. Weasley gasped, Draco heard a second pair of steps climbing toward the bedroom. Harry came through the door, carrying a large and obviously heavy book in his arms Draco recognized as _The Healer's Helpmate_. "Here it is, Mrs. Weasley."

Mrs. Weasley turned, relieving Draco of her fear-filled eyes with a touch of reluctance. "Thank you, Harry dear. If you could just bring it over here?" Mrs. Weasley took the book from him and began to flick through the pages-- Draco thought she was consciously avoiding his gaze-- and Harry hovered uncomfortably behind her. He seemed to be trying to catch Draco's eye, to communicate, but newly on speaking terms as they were, Draco couldn't interpret his glance, for all he tried.

Mrs. Weasley was first to break the awkward silence that had fallen between the three of them. "Here it is." She raised her wand and pointed it at Draco's swollen wrist, lying limp on his knee. "_Episkey!_"

The wrist grew very hot and then relaxed to an blazing iciness. When the cold too had faded, Draco flexed his wrist experimentally. It seemed to work fine and he had to suppress a laugh at the thought of the Dark Lord's face had he been able to watch this strange exchange. "Thanks, Mrs. Weasley," he grinned at her.

"You're quite welcome." She seemed to pause a minute as her dark eyes perused his face. "Draco, are you all right? I mean, otherwise. I mean, if-- if You-Know-Who..."

"I'm fine, Mrs. Weasley," he proclaimed firmly. He tried to amend the tone, thinking it might have sounded belligerent. "It was just-- just a pleasant little chat otherwise, I assure you."

Mrs. Weasley's eyes slid onto Harry a moment, who dodged her glance, looking a little guilty. "So-- so he doesn't know where--?"

"I-- I don't think so." More truthfully, Draco wasn't sure the Dark Lord was intending to do anything about it, at least not presently. After all, if he expected him to savage Harry, then he couldn't want to remove Draco too quickly from his presence.

"All right," Mrs. Weasley said shakily, standing. "All right. Draco, if you're all right, then I think you ought to try and get some more sleep. Harry, come on--"

"Actually, Mrs. Weasley, I was hoping I could stay with Draco for a bit." He said it in a rush, as though afraid she'd chivvy him out the door before he could finish the sentence.

It was perhaps the use of his first name that made Mrs. Weasley's eyebrows rise so high; they were in danger of vanishing amid the flyaway wisps that brushed her forehead. Her eyes slid in surprise between the two of them and then fastened on Draco, looking slightly uneasy. "Well," she murmured, "if Draco doesn't mind, then I suppose..."

"I don't mind," Draco answered quickly.

Mrs. Weasley nodded curtly. With her still trembling hand on the doorknob, she looked back at the pair of them to say, "I don't want you two up too long, though, it's already very late."

Draco glanced quickly at Bill's poster of Egypt and did the math in his head. Yes, it was already two o'clock. Had he really been with the Dark Lord that long?

"And I'm writing to Dumbledore."

"Yeah," Harry sighed. "I guess he'd want to know." Draco, though, was horrified by the idea and argued, "No, Mrs. Weasley, can't we--?"

"I don't think we can. Harry's right, he'd want to know." She gave him a reassuring smile before shutting the door gently behind herself.

Draco lay back against the headboard with a slight groan. "How much did you tell her?" he demanded wearily.

"Er, well, I--" Harry seemed to hesitate. With his eyes closed, Draco could still feel Harry's keen gaze upon him. "I don't think... I think she's more worried that I'm still glimpsing things through Voldemort's--" Draco tried to conceal his involuntary twitch "--eyes really."

"You told her everything?"

"The gist of it, yeah. Nothing specific, though." He beamed it as if this was supposed to be heartening, but Draco couldn't help worrying. Dumbledore might be an understanding man, he might know that Draco was the Dark Lord's heir, but Draco had so far managed to conceal from him his visions. Snape had never mentioned those to the headmaster, not that he knew of.

"I suppose it would be nice to know how he's doing this anyway," Draco sighed. Dumbledore usually seemed to have answers to that kind of thing. "Do you think he'll come here?"

Harry shrugged. "Only if he's really concerned, but not much seems to faze him, does it?"

"No," Draco agreed. The silence lengthened between them. Draco's wrist was still smarting slightly. How? How was the Dark Lord able to drag him from bed like that? How was he able to hurt Draco in a dream? Surely that wasn't normal...

Harry cleared his throat, a little awkwardly, and Draco's eyes swung round to him. Beneath his wary gaze, Harry seemed to flush slightly. His eyes fell away beneath their glass shield.

"Ah, I'd forgotten you wanted to talk. Well, go on, then, Potter, say your piece."

Harry blushed more deeply, a proper Gryffindor scarlet, Draco thought with a laugh. "I'm sorry," he mumbled.

"For what?" Draco couldn't help the twinge of amusement that rose inside him. It seemed such an uncharacteristic thing for Harry Potter to say, Saint Potter, the Dark Lord's conquerer. Was that title not enough to purge sins after all?

"_Everything!_ Not believing you before now, the way I treated you, knocking you off your broom, your _arm_..."

"You're not going to go taking credit for that, I hope? Give the devil his due, Potter."

"But I--"

"Nor are you going to apologize for anything before fifth year. I deserved probably worse than you gave me back then. I was a git. The biggest arrogant berk it has ever been my misfortune to know." Draco wasn't sure why he was forestalling the apology. He just suddenly found he didn't want it. Somehow, it seemed Harry would be less vulnerable if he didn't say it.

"You weren't that bad," Harry muttered to the sheets.

Draco laughed aloud this time; it was such a lie. He watched Potter's lips twitch into a reluctant, apologetic grin; he knew it was a fib, then. "Now," Draco grinned, composing himself, "you're not here just to apologize, either. You could have done that in front of Mrs. Weasley. What do you want? An account of what happened to me after... after fourth year?"

Harry shook his head, then looked around the dark room. It did not seem to assure him that they were not being spied upon, for he lowered himself onto the bed, near the foot, as close as he dared get to Draco, and pitched his voice in a whisper. " 'My Lord,' you called him..."

"Well, what would you prefer? 'Master?' 'Master' makes me his slave, 'my Lord' and at least I'm a servant."

"You could call him Vol--"

"_No!_ I didn't have your benefit of being brought up away from it all, Potter. 'The Dark Lord' is the only other title I ever heard him given. 'You-Know-Who' was even new to me when I arrived at Hogwarts first year."

"But you don't like him? You're... you're not a Death Eater." Harry admitted it sheepishly, ducking his head again.

Draco beamed, glad he had finally managed to convey that point, though he wished it might have been done some less painful way. "No, I'm not. But that's the type of culture I was raised in. You know, I think, what my parents are."

Harry nodded again. His next thought came out in another soft breath, quieter than the first even. "He seemed really genuinely fond of you." Harry's expression was all revulsion, though Draco thought his eyes betrayed a flicker of dread.

Draco chose to ignore this as tactfully as he could. "I like to think so." The words drifted out on a wistful sigh. "But you-- you must have felt-- I'm a conduit of power to him, nothing more, something he likes simply because he can lay a firm claim to me, because he can use me, because I bend-- or, at least, he thinks I will. I think," Draco swallowed, "he half enjoys the idea that he has to... _break_ me; I'm a challenge to him, a game, but not one he feels he has any threat of losing at..." Draco hesitated a fraction of an instant before expounding, his voice low, "I don't like it, but as you say, it _is_ a sort of fondness, and that's a step up from the kind of proprietorship my father regarded me with. I was merely _his_. To mold, to break. By whatever means. Like-- like I wasn't... _human_."

Harry watched him a moment, his expression dark. He bit back his retort, but couldn't seem to contain it. "Awful man," he growled. "They both sound awful."

"It's a matter of degrees, yes. There's not really a-- a _good_ choice."

"And he called you... called you his..."

"Heir?" Draco tried delicately. He had hoped that detail had escaped Harry's notice.

Another nod.

Draco heaved a sigh. "Very few people know about that, Potter. Very few. Why, I don't even think all the Death Eaters... You won't mention it, will you? Especially to Alana? I promised I'd tell her about it first."

"So then you _are_ his...?" Harry seemed to be having a very hard time getting the word out. Draco thought he saw a flicker of apprehension cross his eyes. "What does that mean... exactly?" he whispered.

"I," Draco began awkwardly, "don't pretend to understand it, Potter. I don't want you thinking... What I know is only what Snape's told me, otherwise..."

"But you're not, surely..." A flush was creeping into his cheeks again.

"Related?" Draco ventured. "Nothing so crude. The Roman emperors, you know, used to adopt sons, upstarts usually from the army, to give their kingdom to. It's more along that line."

Harry seemed to breathe a soft sigh of relief, that might have been the gale through the trees beyond the window.

"Getting foul thoughts were you?"

"I thought maybe your Aunt Bellatrix..."

"Urgh! Potter, _please_!" Draco cried, disgusted. He threw up his hands as if he could ward off the tail end of the sentence. "That is _not_ an image I need planted in my head! Coincidentally, you know she's my aunt? That's not a fact I really like to parade."

"I, er, saw a Black family tree." Potter's mumble faded to a funereal silence.

"Ah," Draco said again. He regarded Harry a moment, blinking. "Yeah, I heard about Black. It was all over the _Prophet_, hard too miss, actually. He was your godfather, wasn't he?"

Harry nodded, silent.

"Hence the bad mood?"

Harry made a swift noise of protest, which Draco broke off. "I'm not blaming you. I actually like to think there was a valid excuse. Were you close?"

"Yeah," Harry breathed. "Kind of."

"As close as any two people with so short an acquaintance can be."

Harry nodded again. "Bellatrix did it, you know."

"No," Draco sighed honestly, "I didn't."

"I couldn't catch her. I tried."

"That's nothing to blame yourself for, Potter. She's too powerful for anyone's good. Don't think I didn't notice."

"But, if I-- if I could have..."

"It wouldn't have brought him back. Don't let yourself think it."

Their eyes met for the briefest of moments, long enough for Draco to see Harry's glimmer in the dim light. Then, Harry ducked his head and Draco had the politesse to look out again toward the rain-washed window.

"So that's why you weren't upset about Nott's father, then?" Draco asked quietly when he thought it was safe.

"Yeah," Harry said, and his voice was strong enough that Draco judged it all right to look around at him. A dark fury was building in Harry's face again. "An eye for an eye."

"Or life for life?" Draco suggested. He regarded Harry with a detached curiosity as he nodded, fierce, grim. Something stirred in Draco's memory. A battered book buried unceremoniously behind several others in the darkest corner of the Malfoy Manor library. " _'An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.'_ "

Harry blinked, bemused.

"Mohandas Gandhi. I think the book must have been my grandfather's. He must have been decent; there aren't any portraits of him in the Manor and Father won't speak of him." His sharp, flinty eye turned on Harry, so that he saw the other boy shrink away. "It's a lesson we all could do with learning."

"Yeah," Harry murmured, "but Voldemort--" he ignored Draco's evident wince as his voice mounted with anger "--killed my parents."

"I'm well aware of it," Draco told him as he tried to recover his languor. "And as I told him, I wouldn't mind seeing you win in the end. But Potter, _revenge_? It's... such a childish notion, really..."

"You should talk."

"Yes, I should. The Weasleys and I are getting on well now, all thought of Marcus Weasley and Noah Malfoy forgotten." He caught Harry's bewildered expression, and quickly countered, "It's a long story and rather irrelevant at the moment. The point is, you don't see me tearing off after any of those who've hurt me in the past, do you? I've spent this last summer trying to get along with you, haven't I?" He knew guilt was a low tactic, but it seemed such an important distinction to make; he wanted Harry to understand. Nevertheless, the contrition that flitted over Harry's open features made him relinquish the trick. "Look, acting on revenge, it sinks you down to his level, Potter. That's why he's so set against Muggles, didn't you know? Surely that's not what you want?"

"No," Harry breathed. "Of course it isn't." His voice trailed off as a gleam of lightning illuminated his face. His eyes turned toward Draco in an earnest appeal as the thunder rumbled ill-temperedly off in the distance. "If not to avenge Mum and Dad, if not for Sirius, then... what _do_ I fight for?"

Draco felt an odd tightening in his chest and his hand reached out so that his fingers brushed Harry's where they lay absently on the faded patchwork. He saw Harry's eyes widen in surprise, the eyebrows rising into the uneven forelock. Draco's hand slithered back, guilty; it had been too bold. "Fight," Draco murmured, trying to cover the clumsy maneuver, eyes averted, "because you should. Fight because of the lives it'll save. For yourself, for your friends." His glance darted upward. "For me."

"You? But, if I defeat him, you have to-- to..."

Draco became abruptly defensive, his shoulders tense, his hands clenched over the coverlet. "What do I care," he demanded, "if the Death Eaters are without a leader? Why should _I_ have to reach out to those idiots? Let them scatter to the winds! Let them murder each other into extinction!"

Harry was suddenly much nearer him, leaning forward, eyes clear, fixed on Draco's. His fingers closed over Draco's fist, warm and gentle. "Stop," he said, and Draco did, staring, unable to part from those shining emeralds. "You've just told me that I couldn't fight for any selfish cause." Harry's voice was quiet, steady, and Draco clung to every word, still gaping. "Do you think I could let you do it, then?"

"It's not the same," Draco bawled, not caring that he sounded childish, impudent.

"It is," Harry assured him. "Neither of us is free, Draco," he noted the use of his first name, "neither of us has control. You've just said it: We do what we have to because of the good it'll do others." Harry gave him a timid smile. "You'll be a far better Dark Lord."

"I don't _want_ to _be_ a Dark Lord!"

"Any more than I want to be a Chosen One. But you can always turn the Death Eaters over to civil service or something."

Draco recognized the joke and cracked a reluctant grin at the thought of his Auntie Bella spearing garbage in a park. He hesitated. "Is it-- is it true, then? That you were in the Department of Mysteries to retrieve a prophecy?"

Harry's face retreated into the shadows again, the fingers withdrawing, the connection broken, though Draco still stared through the gloom, eager. There was a lengthy pause before Harry deigned to a curt, "Yes."

Draco couldn't contain the gasp. "But, then--" The possibility was too exciting. There might be freedom for him after all. "So-- so you _are_ the Chosen One?"

Harry pulled a grimace, but would not answer.

Draco realized immediately he had pried too deeply. Of course the wound would be new, fresh and raw. "I only meant," he amended, "that if you are-- I'd-- I'd like to meet the boy in the prophecy one day, Potter. I'd-- I'd like to help him... if I could."

Harry's eyes widened to catch the dim light. "You know," he inquired, his tone incredulous, "what that might mean? Especially for you, it'd be dangerous."

"I'd do it." The statement rang through him with the same sort of conviction that had startled him earlier, when he had declared himself loyal to Dumbledore. _God_, Draco couldn't help thinking. _ Will I break every dictum I've ever been handed in a mere twenty-four hours?_

But Harry beamed across the bed at him, his eyes shining. "What a strange team we'll make, Draco Malfoy."

"The Dark Lord's conqueror and the Dark Lord's heir," Draco agreed with a solemn nod. "Ironic, isn't it?"

Harry held out his hand, his face resolutely set, and Draco, with a breezy laugh, took it, shaking as they ought to have done on the Hogwarts Express all those years ago.

_A/N: Oh, man! That was long! I hope you're still all with me? Doesn't that just tickle you? Harry and Draco together at last! You realize, of course, I've been building to this scene for three books now? lol. So, perhaps you've noticed, I'm planning for an editing hiatus and so threw more of myself into Draco than ever before to squeeze in all the ideas I have before its too late, with nods to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "_I Have a Dream"_ speech; my beloved, wise Gandhi; and of course, those nutters, the Roman emperors. Forgive the fanfiction nature of those references, but I've always imagined Draco as someone whose education was firmly rooted in history and bookishness. So, my dear readers, with those thank yous well delivered, let me delay no further. Off you trot to review! And please remember, I'm very glad of suggestions. ;-)_

_Yours forever, Tsona _


	12. Fire's the Best Test

_A/N: To answer your question, Sever13 (thank you for that helpful and inspiring review :-) ), and to wrap things up. Enjoy this one while you can; it may well be the last for a long while. :-(_

_Yours forever, Tsona_

Draco awoke to the morning sun streaming through the window, diffusing his room in a soft, warm glow. Catlike, he stretched and his lazy gaze seemed drawn to the foot of his bed, almost as if Harry had spoken. The Boy-Who-Lived had vanished, left sometime early this morning, but the memory of his presence, of their concord still brought a smile creeping upon his lips.

"_What a strange team we'll make, Draco Malfoy."_

A team. A team that included Harry Potter. If only his father could have witnessed their pact.

Still grinning, Draco slipped from his bed, dressed, and padded down the stairs. Already the aromas of Mrs. Weasley's meal wafted up the steps-- sizzling bacon, the warm gooeyness of pancakes, the gentle hint of strong, Irish breakfast tea, and coffee-- mingling with the warm light of the fire, and the bubbling murmurs of friendly conversation. Draco had never traveled these steps in such good spirits. He even managed to answer Ron's dark scowl with a buoyant grin.

Harry, though, offered him a easy smile as Draco slid into his place beside the twins. "Pancakes?"

"Thanks. I'm starved." Draco took the proffered plate and tipped a few onto his plate.

"Are you feeling better, dear?" Mrs. Weasley asked as she passed him the syrup. Her narrowed eyes spun round to pin Harry. "I hope you didn't keep him up late, Harry."

Ron's fork clattered on the plate as he whipped around to gape at his friend, openmouthed. Draco felt the color creeping into his cheeks and, to save Harry from answering, assured Mrs. Weasley that Harry had not. Ron's glare landed on him, instead. His siblings, too, were casting curious glances between the pair of them-- he and Harry. Ginny's eyes were sharp, quick points like needles; he could always tell her gaze apart from the others'. Fred's and George's were lighter, like beaming smirks or carefree laughter. Ron seemed to be working himself up into a state, inflating as his mother did in rage, his ears a dangerous scarlet. Draco, though, didn't want to answer his interrogations, he didn't want Ron's rage to ruin the small effervescence of joy that had captured him. His gaze in his lap, Draco shot Harry a look from behind his lowered lashes. Harry nodded, seeming to have understood.

"I think I'm done, Mrs. Weasley."

_Always the Gryffindor_, Draco thought, caught between vexation and humor. _No subtlety. Jump in and take control with the most drastic plot possible._

"But, Harry! You've hardly eaten anything! Maybe some sausages? Some toast? I'll make whatever you like."

"No, please, Mrs. Weasley. I'm not hungry. Can I go, please?"

Mrs. Weasley nodded, a tad reluctant, and Harry took his plate to the sink. From across the room, Harry shot Draco a significant stare, eyebrows raised.

"Me too, Mrs. Weasley?" There hardly seemed anything for it. It was too late to rein in Harry's too-obvious ploy.

"Of course," Mrs. Weasley wobbled, uncertain.

Draco wished he could have reassured her, explained his and Harry's armistice, but he couldn't do it in front of the others, particularly the incensed Ron, not when his own understanding was so nebulous. Instead, he followed Harry silently to the sink, stacking his dishes on top of his. He could feel Ginny's pins and Ron's daggers upon him, both sharp, both suspicious; Fred's and George's twin grins, and Mrs. Weasley's quavering candles.

"I'll be outside," Harry declared.

After a quick, almost apologetic glance around the breakfast table, Draco schleped out the door in his wake.

Harry was waiting for him with a grin in the yard.

Draco couldn't help it. "Real smooth, Potter. They'll never suspect you left just to talk to me."

"Cut the sarcasm, Malfoy." Harry hesitated a moment, then asked, "Take a walk with me?"

"Where?" Draco was only too eager; he toddled up to Harry and, as Harry moved away toward the low stonewall separating the gardens from the fields, kept pace.

"Just around," Harry told him. "We never really got to finish our discussion last night."

"What more could there be? I told you practically everything I know."

"But I didn't tell you everything I know. Aren't you curious?"

Draco offered him a sheepish grin and admitted, "Well, maybe there were a few things..."

"And if you've been honest with me, I ought to repay you in kind. You were honest with me?" His green eyes were knives, swords, the tips resting poised against Draco, too eager for an excuse to push through, inflict damage.

"Of course!" Draco parried quickly. He forced down a small flicker of fear.

Harry's eyelids fell shut, a veil over that sudden bellicosity. He shook his head, as if the instinct were a midge he could scare off. "I'm sorry," he muttered, his voice heavy. "We've been enemies so long..."

"I know," Draco assured him. He stared out along the horizon. The field where they had played Quidditch not so long ago, where Harry had dropped an apple on his head, pushed him from his broom was visible through the twisted branches. "How did you get into my head, Harry?"

They took a few more steps before Harry composed a response. "It wasn't your head I was in. It was Voldemort's."

Draco flinched back from the cursed name. "How?" Maybe, just maybe, with this new bit of information he could devise a theory, guess how it was possible for the Dark Lord to pull him from the safety of his bed miles away, drag him into his presence.

"Dumbledore says it has something to do with this." Harry touched the scar on his forehead, a too-gentle brush, as if the wound were still tender. "He thinks something happened that night. A... a transfer of powers, I think he called it."

Draco frowned. "So you don't know how he does it to me?" He didn't see how anything like that could explain the connection between himself and the Dark Lord. Harry was, after all, the only known survivor of the dreaded _Avada Kedavra_.

"Not unless you've got a cursed scar," Harry apologized.

Draco shook his head. "Just the Dark Mark."

"He... he can't do this to the other Death Eaters, then? I mean, maybe it _does_ have something to do with the Mark."

"I've never heard of it." Truthfully, Draco had never thought to ask. He recalled Snape saying that he was not as tightly bound to the Dark Lord as Draco was, that he could escape more easily. Still, he resolved to ask Snape about it as soon as he got the chance.

Harry clambered over the crumbling wall and looked back at Draco, who was climbing more gracefully, more cautiously over the rocks, looking for the next sturdy stone.

"What goes on in there?"

"In where?" Draco asked absently, reaching the uneven height of the wall.

"In... wherever they took you...?"

Draco, standing atop the pile of rocks, looked down at Harry, eyes wide.

"Durmstrang." The answer was leaden, toneless. "We were all taken to Durmstrang."

" 'We?' "

"Sure. Me and all the Death Eaters' children. Crabbe, Goyle, Nott... He's been... training us. Dark magic. Poisons. The kind of stuff Dumbledore doesn't allow to be taught at Hogwarts," Draco added, "for good reason."

Harry hesitated. "Can you teach me?"

"You want to learn Dark magic?" Draco asked as he began the descent to Harry's side.

"I want to know what I'm facing."

Draco was on level ground again. His eyes and Harry's were at exactly the same height. Draco probed the other boy's. They were dark, determined. He'd tipped up his chin. "You're serious." It wasn't a question; Draco could see it written on Harry's open features. Draco turned to regard the dark forest to their right that separated the Weasley's property from that of their Muggle neighbors, but he saw instead only images of his past: Death Eater professors striding through shimmering potion vapors; the Dark Lord's leering visage, glad of the excuse to punish; vivid flashes of emerald green and skidding dead spiders. "I don't like the Dark Arts, Potter. And I don't pretend I'm brilliant at them. I more or less failed out of the course, even without my demerits and treachery."

"I don't call myself a Defense genius, but I still teach."

Draco glanced back at him, curious. "Do you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do a bit." Harry didn't seem entirely comfortable with the topic, but Draco pressed on, too intrigued to drop it.

"Will you teach me?"

Harry looked surprised. "You want to learn Defense Against the Dark Arts?"

"Well, yeah. I'm a marked man now, too, Harry. Maybe even second on the Dark Lord's hit list, after you. It's about time I started learning how to defend myself."

"You must know a little. You escaped. You did escape?" he added.

"Yeah. Yeah, I suppose." Silently, Draco finished, _At least physically. I think. _ His recent nightmare had cast doubt on even that. "But it was luck," he declared, wanting to make this clear. "You were _always_ better at defense than I was."

"I had to be," Harry reminded him. He cast his considering gaze over Draco, before offering, "I'll talk to the others. I'll do what I can, Draco. And if they won't accept you into the D.A., we'll meet-- the two of us-- and I'll teach you."

Draco felt a smile spread across his face from the inside. "Thank you." He couldn't think what else to say.

"And will you teach me?"

Draco hesitated. "I don't know that Dumbledore would like--"

"It's not as if I'll use them. I just want to be prepared."

Draco still wasn't sure. "Maybe." He felt that if Harry were going to tutor him, he ought to repay him somehow. A line of text he'd once read rose to the surface of his mind, _The enemy of my enemy is my friend_. Surely, he should help his friends. "If it's just you."

Harry nodded, seeming to be aware this was the closest he would get to a commitment. He walked on once more, still making for the Quidditch pitch. Draco fell into step beside him. He knew he had let Harry down, maybe even insulted his generosity. He felt he ought to apologize or otherwise make up for the _faux pas_, but didn't know how to begin. Worse still, he could hear echoes of his own past convictions, of the rumors that had spread throughout the Wizarding World, and the Death Eaters' network in particular, about the Boy-Who-Lived.

"_You reckon Potter could be a Dark Lord?"_ Nott had asked him as they ambled through the maze garden one lazy summer day between first and second year.

"_Potter? Please. I can really see _him _running an army, tossing aside enemies. It always surprises me that that idiot can put his shoes on the right feet, let alone tie them."_

"_But just suppose--"_

"_It wouldn't happen, Theo."_

"_Then how do you reckon he survived that night?"_

Draco had hesitated, bought time by dipping down to press his finger gently against one of the large thorns on the rose bushes, testing its sharpness. _"Luck, I'd guess. I've always wondered about mirrors, too."_

"_Draco, a Killing Curse would shatter a mirror, it wouldn't deflect it."_

Theodore Nott was cleverer than he was and better read, Draco admitted it, and that had been the end of that theory, and though Draco would never have owned it, it had cast doubt upon his confidence that Harry was not powerfully Dark. How else could he have survived? Draco had watched the Boy-Who-Lived carefully all through the following school year, searching for signs of Dark wizardry, but though the rest of the school had suspected him of opening the Chamber of Secrets, though he had revealed his ability to speak Parseltongue, it could not have been clearer that he despised everything the Chamber, its history, and the Dark Arts they all assumed pervaded and surrounded it stood for. Still, Draco was loathe to present Harry with the temptation. Perhaps Harry was no Dark Lord at the age of twelve, perhaps he'd never shown any inclination to follow in the Dark Lord's path, but Draco couldn't be sure that power, the kind of power that only Dark sorcery offered, would hold no allure for him. The only way he felt he could have been certain was to subject Harry to several years' threat and employment of the Cruciatus Curse, prove personally the effects of the curse, make him ill every time he thought of it, turn him off of ever using it forever. As Draco's father had done for him. But Draco wasn't prepared to do that, and he was certain Harry wouldn't allow it, understand.

They completed the circuit in silence. Draco thought he ought to have explained some of his thoughts, ought to have offered Harry some reason for his refusal, and though he opened his mouth several times to try, each and every possible account seemed lacking, incomplete, calculated to start an argument, to dissolve their newly reached entente.

It was the sight, as they reached the low stone wall into the backyard, of a flaming head of hair that goaded Draco back into speech.

"Which Weasley is that?" he wondered aloud.

"Ron." Harry's answer was swift, confident, born of years' close friendship. Draco chanced a sad, sideways glance at the other boy as Harry sprang over the rocks. Would he ever recognize Draco with such surety?

As they drew nearer, Draco recognized of the fierce, almost feral anger written across Ron's freckled face, in the eyes like ice chips. He slowed his pace, hesitating to approach. Beside him, Draco thought he sensed Harry stiffening, but his voice was buoyant as he hailed his friend.

Ron did not seem in the mood, however, for polite exchanges. His voice was a hiss from an ice chest in the hot summer air. "Where were you? Why are you with _him_? What the _hell_ is going on?"

Harry glanced at Draco. Draco wondered if he had imagined Harry's earlier apprehension. His eyebrows were raised high in surprise as he silently sought Draco's permission to speak plainly. Draco gave the merest shake of his head.

"We just went for a walk."

Ron's eyes narrowed, if possible, even further. He stared into Harry's face. It was a long minute before he voiced his conclusion, "You don't look Imperius-ed."

"Ron! I'm not--"

"Then why the _hell_--? You sneak off in the middle of the night, no explanation, you don't return for hours-- When you finally do turn up, you tell me you're tired, you want to sleep, we'll talk about it in the morning-- we never did talk about it in the morning, though, did we, Harry? _You_ wanted to hurry to breakfast, you were _hungry_! And all of a sudden, you and Malfoy are acting as if the last five years never happened. What do you _expect_ me to think, Harry? You never tell me anything anymore! I'm left to make guesses. Were you _ever_ planning on telling me what happened last night? Why is it I have to come stalking you while you sneak off with Malfoy after you were _so hungry_?"

Draco watched this exchange with rising alarm. He had always considered Ron and Harry's friendship rather secure. Yes, they fought and when they did, they were overt about it, but the fury on Ron's face now and the fright, real fear, on Harry's forced him to speak.

"Ron--"

"You!" Ron rounded on him, and Draco only just caught himself from stumbling backward. If Ron's eyes had been daggers before, they were now poisoned javelins. "_Stay out of this!_"

"But if you'd only just--"

"I said, _stay out_! Well, Harry?"

Harry flinched. "Ron. Ron, I can't-- You have to understand, I--"

"Harry, tell him, just--"

Ron dived for his wand. It was upon Draco before he could react, covering him, and those cold eyes adding their force behind the threat. "_Traitor!_"

"Yes, but, Ron, not-- not against us. Draco--"

"Draco? _Draco?_ What's happened to you, Harry Potter? Just last night you were telling me what you'd like to do to this-- this _rat_, this pathetic excuse for a human being. You'd had nightmares about him. Nightmares where he found a way into--" Draco didn't quite catch the word; it seemed somehow silenced "--had turned the Order in, had murdered everyone, had murdered my mum and dad, Fred, George, Ginny, Bill, Lupin, Tonks, Kings--"

"_Ron!_" It was a warning, but Ron was not listening.

"Moody, Dung, even Dumbledore! We were plotting together, you and I. We were going to find a way to break the charms he's been placing on everyone. You said we'd kill him if it came to it, if that was the only way to save my family. You said we'd go to everyone, Dumbledore, the whole Order, anyone and everyone who might believe that this festering dungheap isn't trustworthy."

Harry glanced back at Draco, stiff and still at wandpoint, trying to apologize silently, to take back the words. Draco gave him a small, quavering smile to say it was all forgiven, forgotten, and a jet of light whizzed past his ear, so near that he could feel its heat, thought he smelt singed hair.

Ron was breathing heavily. He was like an aroused lion, a lion whose pride has been threatened, ready to use teeth, claws, and any other weapon that presented itself to expel the menace, and he was taking aim again, gripping his wand in both hands to try and keep it steady.

Draco's first instinct was to run. His gaze whipped round to Harry. His face an ashen white, he gaped at Ron; his expression echoed Hagrid's numb, horrified disbelief during his Skrewts' first, bloodthirsty rampage.

Draco staggered backward, hands instinctively thrown out in front of him, though he knew they'd be no defense, and only just missed the second spurt of light.

Ron's face was a mask of fury. He seemed to be focusing all his energies into this one final try. The energy was beginning to congeal on the end of the wand, a murderous incandescence. Draco remembered reading about this effect once, remembered the fragile, too thin sheets of molded vellum that he had handled with such fearful care, but had never seen it. _'When a wizard is moste inflamed, his power can nat be contained. Should the wizard seek to contain his power, it shall be expelled in the form moste potent...' _When that spell was loosed, it would be nuclear.

"_NO!_"

Harry darted forward and threw himself in front of Draco, arms outspread. Draco was so stunned, he forgot to watch the growing glow at Ron's wand tip.

"_Get out of it, Harry!_"

"No. No, Ron, drop it. Don't do this."

The radiation turned a pallid green. Ron wasn't going to be able to hold it much longer, and if Harry didn't move...

Ron's breath was ragged, each word escaped on a puff of air through his bared teeth. "Get-- out-- of-- the-- way."

"No."

"Do as he says, Harry!" The pale, sickly green was quickly deepening to emerald.

Harry turned his glare on Draco instead. "No."

"Stop being noble! For God's sake, _move_, you sodding Gryff--"

Ron's wand was shuddering and he looked suddenly alarmed. "_Harry!_" The flame erupted from the tip before he could drop the renegade willow. Draco saw the

emerald blaze flying toward him over Harry's shoulder; he had also turned to watch its progress. Would he survive a second Killing Curse? Was that possible? Draco shut his eyes as the rush of wind, the crash of the surf began to tear through his ears.

Something struck him from the side. He was lifted off his feet, tossed through the air. He hit the ground with such force that the wind was knocked from him and he simply lay there, eyes still jammed shut. His only, small comfort was the sharp, ragged gasps beside him of Harry, just audible over the rush, the roar of wind that hadn't yet ceased echoing around them, though the light was gone, or had gone golden at least. His hand felt its way through the air until it made contact with something solid: gloriously warm flesh, shuddering beneath a thin, cotton t-shirt. He let himself breathe.

"You would have regretted that very much, Mr. Weasley."

The voice was slow, calm, and achingly familiar. Draco lifted his head. Dumbledore was standing several feet from the back door, his wand in his hand, raised, but pointed, Draco realized, not at Ron, or even him and Harry, but at a blazing inferno consuming a beech at the edge of the forest. A stream of water shot from its end and the flames vanished in a billow of steam that cleared to reveal the charred, black skeleton of the tree.

"Luckily, I witnessed the casting of your spell and not merely the effect. I know you did not intend to produce a Killing Curse."

"I-- I didn't," Ron gasped. "I didn't cast any spell!"

Dumbledore offered him a faint smile. "Your wand has had its say now, Mr. Weasley. You can pick it up."

Draco did not see Ron bend down though as Dumbledore began to walk toward Harry and himself.

"What-- what are you _doing_ here?" Harry gasped. Draco was glad; he didn't think he could have spoken; he merely stared up into Dumbledore's calm, cragged face, the crinkled, twinkling blue eyes.

The headmaster chuckled and extended a hand down toward them; Draco noticed, for he thought Dumbledore to be right-handed, that it was the left one and that the right remained hidden in the voluminous sleeve of his peacock blue robe. Harry took it without question and was consequently helped upright. "I came here hoping to speak to you and Mr. Malfoy." Dumbledore reached down once more, and after a moment's hesitation, Draco accepted the proffered hand. "You are fortunate I arrived when I did."

"Yeah." Draco's voice was shaky; he didn't like it and shut his mouth quickly.

"Were-- were you the one who knocked us out of the way, then?"

"Yes, Harry, that was I."

Draco glanced back toward the house. Ron had still not moved any more than to wrap himself in his arms. From here, Draco thought his pale face had a green cast, but maybe this was the afterimage of the spell.

"I-- I can't believe Ron would do something like that." Harry sounded nearly as ill as Ron looked.

"He didn't." Draco surprised himself with this bold defense, was still ashamed of the quaking voice that uttered it. "It was _Nimium Vis_-- the Excess Energy Effect." He glanced toward Dumbledore for confirmation.

The headmaster's thick, white eyebrows rose along his high, channeled forehead. "How do you know about that?"

"I-- I read it. In a book."

If Dumbledore wondered where he had come across such a book he did not ask and Draco was grateful. He didn't want to have to admit that he had read _Secrets of the Darkest Arts_ at the Dark Lord's behest. Perhaps Dumbledore already suspected as much, for as he turned his back to them, Draco thought he sensed a certain tension in the set of his shoulders. "Shall we go inside, then?" Dumbledore did not wait for either of them to reply, but strode off toward the backdoor. Harry jogged to catch up, but Draco trailed glumly behind, stewing over whether he'd said too much.

"Will Ron be all right?" he heard Harry ask the headmaster in an undertone as they passed the redhead, still slightly green, very pale, and as rigid as someone Petrified.

Dumbledore walked several paces further before responding. "He shall be."

"I still don't really understand that _Nimee_-- thing. What happened?"

"I shall explain it to you later," Dumbledore told him as he pushed open the backdoor and stepped into the kitchen. Mrs. Weasley was standing in the middle of the floor, waiting for them, her face as white as her son's.

"Ron--" she gasped.

"Will be all right. No one's hurt."

"_Oh!_ Oh! _boys_!" She scooped both Draco and Harry into so fierce a hug that their heads knocked together as she drew them in. "My God! if something had happened to either of you--"

"They're both fine, Molly," Dumbledore reassured her. "All perfectly fine."

Mrs. Weasley gave a quiet hiccough and drew away from them. Harry massaged his bumped head, but Draco turned to listen at the sound of his name.

"Mr. Malfoy, I think I'd like to speak with you first, if you'll oblige me."

Draco nodded, numbly. For the first time, he was able to wonder and worry over why the headmaster had sought him out mid-summer.

"We'll just be in the living room, then, Molly."

Mrs. Weasley nodded as well. Draco thought she looked reluctant to let him leave her sight again. As he followed Dumbledore into the next room, he saw her drag Harry back into an embrace against his meek protests, though her eyes were for Draco.

The living room was quiet, the grate empty, but the windows shut. Clearly, Dumbledore didn't want to risk being overheard. Draco hovered near the door, still fretting, as he watched the aging professor ease himself onto the couch, again using his left hand to steady himself while keeping the right veiled. Draco allowed him his secrets, though wondered if perhaps he'd come to give him or Harry something, something that had to be wholly secret.

"Sit, Draco," the headmaster commanded when he had settled himself and peered across the room to see Draco, still standing, awkward and silent, by the shut door.

Draco cut his downcast eyes sideways, but did not move toward any of the numerous chairs.

"Surely you don't still fear me? Surely I've proven myself to you by now?" He sounded slightly hurt and it was this more than anything that goaded Draco into speech.

"I don't... trust authority figures, sir. Surely you can give me that liberty?"

The headmaster nodded slowly and then motioned toward one of the armchairs, motioned with his right hand this time. He looked as though it pained him to remove it from the sleeve, to expose it to the open air, to Draco's gawking stare. His right hand was black and dead-looking, a charred, shriveled, gnarled claw.

"My God, sir! What--?"

"Please, Draco. Sit."

This time, Draco did as he was bidden. He fell into the nearest armchair, still gaping at the dead thing at the end of Dumbledore's arm.

"As you see, I have had an eventful summer. And so, I hear, have you."

Draco managed to wrench his eyes away from the hand, looked into Dumbledore's piercing, blue eyes, and nodded once.

"Particularly, the Weasleys tell me of a certain dream that occurred, unless I mistake the date, last night."

Draco felt a great inrush of excited trepidation. If Harry had not been able to explain the Dark Lord's power over him, if the Weasleys had been mystified, it was understandable. But surely, _surely_, if anyone apart from the Dark Lord himself could illuminate the matter, it was Dumbledore. "It was, sir." Draco didn't realize that his fingers had curled tightly on the chair's arms or recognize the slight tilt to his posture.

Dumbledore regarded him calmly over the rims of his golden spectacles. "How long," he asked, "has this been occurring?"

"Since... since-- I don't know, since I left him, I guess." Draco was impatient. Why delay? Had he not waited long enough?

The bushy eyebrows rose. "That long?"

"Yes."

"And you never brought it to my attention? Never once mentioned--?"

"I didn't want you to worry, all right?" Dumbledore's tone was patronizing, scolding, and it irked Draco. He was old enough to handle, to deserve whatever the truth might be.

"It _is_ something to worry about, Draco." Dumbledore's stare was severe.

"_Why?_"

"You are being taken in the throes of sleep, even from the safety of your bed at Hogwarts I think I am right to assume, and being carried miles to Lord Voldemort's feet. You don't find that worrisome?"

"Of course I do," Draco conceded when he had pulled out of his involuntary shudder at the Dark Lord's name. "I'd have to be an idiot--"

"Then, why did you not bring it to my attention?"

"Because--" Draco swallowed, dropped his gaze to the headmaster's feet where his robe brushed the toes of his purple, dragonhide boots. "Because I worry I might be... of use to him when-- when it happens. I was afraid you'd think so, too, consider me too great a liability to harbor at Hogwarts. I don't know how it happens. I can only assume that he's found a way to... enter my mind, control my mind, control my magic, force me to Apparate to him, and if he's burrowed so deeply, who's to say he can't... can't take from me what he wants, whatever he wants. I could be a passage into Hogwarts for him for all I know. I could be spying for him and never even know it. It's too much like the Imperius Curse, what he does to me."

"Yet, you clearly remain yourself during these, ah, for lack of a better word, dreams."

Draco glanced up. He couldn't interpret the headmaster's stone-blank face.

"That is to say," Dumbledore assisted, "that had Voldemort been controlling you, you could not possibly have defended Harry, denied him, he would not have had to have resorted to physical torture to try and win your obedience."

"I suppose so. But if he isn't controlling me, how is it I end up at his feet?"

Dumbledore turned his bright gaze on Draco once again. "I'm afraid there can be no doubt that, on some level at least, he is controlling you. As you rightly say, you would not otherwise go to him. However, he cannot be controlling you as deeply as you suspect. Tell me, has anyone ever seen you experiencing one of these dreams?"

"Blaise did once. He said I was shouting in my sleep. He woke me up."

"Ah." It was a gentle, soft note of interest. "And how did Mr. Zabini accomplish this?"

"He struck me," Draco muttered to Dumbledore's purple boots.

Dumbledore was silent for some minutes. When Draco next chanced a glance up at him, it was to see a smile stretching his mouth. "I have a theory, Draco."

Draco raised his head, gave the headmaster his full attention.

"You know, of course, that Voldemort made you his heir. By Professor Snape's understanding, Voldemort placed upon you more than the usual spells he uses on his Death Eaters. He bound you, as I understand it, quite deeply to himself. Now, no enchantment that I know of allows anyone to inhabit two identical bodies at once. Further, you can be woken by being physically struck, as you put it. It is therefore my assumption that your body could only have remained in your bed at the time of these dreams--"

"But, sir, he broke my--"

"Molly explained this, yes; Voldemort snapped your wrist. But, as I have just reminded you, you and Voldemort, however much you should dislike it, share a unique connection. I do not know what part of you Voldemort bound to himself. I do know that he takes the time to take possession of a small part of all of his Death Eaters' bodies, sealing the deed with the Dark Mark. If Voldemort has chained you more closely to him, then either he has appropriated your whole body-- unlikely, as we have already established that your physical self remains when you are transported-- or perhaps he linked your mind and his--"

"Which would mean he could use me to spy," Draco lamented.

"Yet, I do not suspect this, because he does not seem aware of your location. Unless you believe he has given up the search for you?"

"No. But, he knew things. Things he could have seized from my mind. He knew I was near Harry."

"Is there no where else he could have gleaned this information, if we have already ruled out your body and I do not suspect him to control your mind?" It was a delicate question. Dumbledore wanted him to think, but was not at all pleased with the obvious conclusion.

"My soul," Draco responded, the answer quiet, tight, forced out on a breath that wanted to be held. "He has my soul, doesn't he?"

"I fear," Dumbledore tiptoed, "he may have some part of it."

"God." Draco himself didn't know whether it was an expletive or a plea. "What do I do?" It was an earnest question and Draco met Dumbledore's sorrowful blue eyes willingly, begging the answer from their clear depths.

"I don't--

"Professor, with all respect, don't give me that. You _do_ know. You _always_ know."

"And with all respect, Draco," the headmaster answered with his bushy eyebrows slightly raised, "you overestimate my knowledge. I'm afraid this is a subject I do not understand."

"So-- so, what-- what now?"

"I don't know. Keep on living, I suppose."

"With a monster, a parasite living inside me?"

"Or perhaps, you in him, yes."

"God," Draco repeated. His own hands felt clammy clutching each other in his lap. He was afraid if he unclamped them he might claw his way through his own skin, through to dig out the germ. Already his skin was burning, the brand on his left forearm on fire. The smoke from it cast a cloud over his vision so that Dumbledore began to fade from sight.

"I would like to help you, Draco, as much as I believe I can. You understand, it would be without any promises."

Immediately, his vision cleared again and he was staring into the lined visage of his headmaster. "Really? You have an idea?"

"Only that, yes. Would you consent to extra lessons with me?"

"With you? You teach?"

"I have done some in my many years," Dumbledore conceded with a soft chuckle. "Will you meet me, then?"

"Of course! I'd do anything!"

"Yes, that's what worries me a little." His gaze was again softened by sadness. The headmaster stood and Draco, taking his clue, leapt to his feet as well. "Do take care of yourself, Draco?"

"Of course," he repeated. "And" --Draco's gaze trailed to rake the long and concealing right-hand sleeve of Dumbledore's robes-- "take care of yourself, too?"

Dumbledore offered him a smile. "I will try. I would shake your hand," the headmaster apologized, "but obviously--" He made a slight, defeated flourish with his deadened right hand. "I look forward to seeing you in September. Be prepared to work when we meet for our first lesson."

Draco nodded to show he understood and would remember.

"Off with you, then, and send Harry in after you."

"Thank you, sir." Draco turned and, as he opened the living room door onto Mrs. Weasley's shout of, "Ron!" he felt considerably better than he had in a long time. He was in a home where there were people who cared about him, he and Harry had made peace at last, and Dumbledore had a idea that might curb his hellish visitations to the Dark Lord. He was even able to conjure a slight smile as he stepped to the side, pressing himself up against the wall, to let a still quite ashen and sullenly silent Ron pass on his way to the crooked staircase. When the flame-haired phantom had gained the first step, Draco continued to the kitchen, where Harry was placating a thouroughly distraught Mrs. Weasley, patting her awkwardly on the back as he stood in her path.

"Just let him go, Mrs. Weasley," he implored. "Let him recover."

"But my Ronniekins! I have to make sure he's all right!"

Draco stepped through the doorway. "He'll be all right," he assured her; Mrs. Weasley stopped fighting Harry to gawk. "He wasn't expecting that kind of effect. He didn't mean for it to happen." Draco transfered his gaze from a tear-choked Mrs. Weasley to Harry. "Dumbledore's ready for you. He's in the living room."

Harry offered him a beaming smile and strode across the room. "Thanks," he grinned as he bounded past Draco and across the hall, flouncing through the door.

Draco moved forward to take Harry's place beside Mrs. Weasley, allowing her to encase him in a bone-crushing hug that was not for his own comfort at all, but rather all for hers. He didn't mind it in the least.

_When the stars threw down their spears,_

_And water'd heaven with their tears,_

_Did he smile, his work to see?_

_Did he who make the lamb make thee?_

_--William Blake "The Tyger"_

_A/N: Oh wow! I love it when my characters take over the plot! I'm giving them all the credit on this one. I just allowed Harry and Draco to talk and that conversation was all them and none of me; Nott and Draco volunteered that little flashback, although J. K. Rowling inspired it (see the Extras: Edits section of her website); _I_ would never have believed little Ronniekins had that kind of power, or stupidity, or audacity in him. I mean, I know he hates Draco, but _that_! A brief thank you to Dumbledore for his timely arrival. That would have been a most unfortunate tragedy, though admitably, a good plot twist. Happy endings or good fiction, the eternal debate... So, my dear readers, you've come to the end of another of my stories. Alas, for this is the last of this series I will put up for a while, as I intend to return to Death Eaters Don't Cry and go through the series in a fit of editing as my series now has a better plot line and Jo's said all she will. But all is for good. So, keep an eye out for updates, because I promise they'll be better as I get through with them, and meanwhile keep yourselves well. And, oh yeah-- please review!!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_


End file.
